I was a "military guy"back in the day 31m and 31q to be precise. On Jun 14, 2013 9:09 PM, "Michael Thomas" <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:
On 06/14/2013 05:34 PM, Scott Helms wrote:
Is it possible? Yes, but it's not feasible because the data rate would be too low. That's what I'm trying to get across. There are lots things that can be done but many of those are not useful.
I could encode communications in fireworks displays, but that's not effective for any sort of communication system.
You're really hung up on bit rate, and you really shouldn't. Back in the days before gigabit pipes, tapping out morse was considered a data rate beyond belief. Ships used flags and signaling lights well into the second world war at least. The higher the value of the information, the lower the bit rate you need to transmit it (I think this might formally be information entropy, but I'm not certain).
You might think that there is nothing of particularly high value to be had within the confines of what a (compromised) router can produce, but I'd say prepare to be surprised. I'm not much of a military guy, but some of the stuff they dream up makes you go "how on earth did you think that up?". And that's just the unclassified widely known stuff. Part of the issue when you say "it could be done cheaper somewhere else" presupposes we know the economics of what they're trying to do. We don't, so we should assume that routers just like everything else are a target, and that you almost certainly won't notice it if they are.
Mike