Bill Swearingen - HAKC THE POLICE - DEF CON 27 Conference 

As someone who used to install police radar, LIDAR, MIRT, and LPR systems (among other things), I can tell you that they're amazingly easy to manipulate, and super vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation. This talk was hilarious, and just confirmation of a lot of stuff I learned working in a cop shop for 3 years.

My cat watched this video and now she's jamming my laser pointer. Has totally ruined my fun. Thanks a lot, Bill.

The fact that his "The FCC won't let us speed" line didn't get a laugh is the most illegal part of this talk.

I know what's going on in VA. Anyone that travels during the holidays can tell you that entire state is funded by moving violations.

Finally my background in radar pays off with me understanding all of the fundamental principles of a single defcon video

Closed captions are savage. Every stutter and fumbled word is represented perfectly.

Before my radar got stolen, I used to joke that it was an ATM finder, seemed to go off every time i was near an ATM. Didnt realize it was the auto door frequency till now.

Hacking with physics --this has got to be my favourite DEFCon talk yet.

Speed detection devices have digital signal processors. God tier hack sends back a set of encoded commands that compromise the devices. They have a speaker for beeping, so maybe have it play careless whisper

I'm so glad that defcon is on RU-vid now. I've wanted to go since I was a child.

What a phenomenal talk! you, good sir, are the shining example of what makes this community so amazing!

This is going to mess with some self driving cars, isn’t it

So the FCC won't let me be, or let me be me, so let me see... I got that :)

The Hacker Manifest: Don't judge people by how they look.

*Ed Bolean and Alex Roy have entered the chat.

In the UK a guy did it with a 3rd party reverse sensor kit, modded signal blocks out radar, took to court and the guy lost. Police recognised the car after a while and clicked something was up putting an error on the screen every time it drive past.

"Well, I'm out of jail. Fines are paid. So let's do this again." :D

"How is this guy going 88 mph on his bicycle?" Trololol

26:12 Random Eminem Reference

For laser, wouldn't a relatively high power LED array with a pseudo random generator producing high levels of white noise bury the signal. It would be like trying to listen to you clapping hands outside the airport terminal from across the street and listening for the echo while a jet is taking off. With daytime running lights, this would mask the fact there is a perimeter of bright IR LEDs by the headlights. A passive Doppler speed radar is a radar horn with a tuned stub in the feedhorn that is tuned into and out of resonance with a varactor which modulates the radar signal return. This is not a transmitter, but a tuned retro reflector with a modulator. A variation I have seen had the antenna and feedhorn modified from a C band dish with the antenna polarization motorized by a small high speed motor. This works on the X band. Goal is to set the speed to display triple digits in a car that is not going anywhere that fast. Works well to wake up the officer behind the billboard reading a paper waiting for the money bell to go off. Never run it without being in a stream of traffic. Makes identification of the signal very difficult. Passive detectors will not see it as it is not a transmitter. It is tuned so it's retro reflection is much stronger than headlights. Selectively and rapidly changing polarization modulated the polarized radar signal 100%. Used to play with this in the late 1970's before it was illegal. Cruise control is very effective in highly enforced zones using excessive enforcement for revenue and is legal.

If a human made it...a human can break it! Great talk :)

I heard of rumors Virginia police even consider Waze app a radar detector and wrote tickets for people using it as it alerts to their speed traps. I live in FL it is amazing how many people you see with Virginia tags doing the speed limit on the interstate either left or middle Lane while everyone else is swerving around the person from Virginia. The best part when police officer going with the flow of traffic 15+ over "blow" their doors off along with everyone else. I been through Virginia it's just a big speed trap.

"the fcc wont let us speed, or let me be me, so lets see" I did what you see there.

"You should seriously consider talking to the media about federal offenses." - only applies if you're not wealthy and/ or in politics, apparently.

the really interesting thing is the legality of intentionally reducing the radar cross section of your car. it may or may not be illegal to skin your car such that it has little or no radar cross section. most jammer laws focus on the jammer itself, and reducing your cross section is completely passive and requires no jammer at all

You missed one big legal issue. Using a laser may be unregulated, but using it for the express purpose of "interfering with a police offer" can be a felony offense. If the cop knows what jamming looks like, all they have to do is pull you over, observe the jamming gear, and CONFISCATE THE EVIDENCE, which is your car. That's something to at least be aware of.

why did youtube recommend this to me? Does youtube want me to speed?

You can use a transverter or simple mixer circuit to bring up the frequency of the SDR's output.

I’d like to see Ed Bolian, or Arne Toman and Doug Tabbutt give a talk at one of these kinds of conferences about his Cannonball run because they went nuts for countermeasures like this. He has a youtube channel called VINWiki where he’s talked about it if anyone is interested. And actually his record was just broken by another team and they released videos on VINWiki going over the setup they had in their car for police countermeasures. They used laser jammers, thermal scope, brake light kill switch, along with modifying the rear end of the car with vinyl wrap to make it look like a different kind of car from the rear. They made it across the US in 27 hours and 25 minutes with an average speed of over 100mph. That includes fuel stops and everything, and they did it without getting stopped by the police even once, despite going nearly 200mph at some points. They aren’t huge techies or anything, they’re just car guys who like to do crazy shit like drive from coast to coast in a ridiculously low amount of time. I think the hacker community would be able to understand and relate. Ed and his team previously held the record, and Arne and Doug along with their 3rd just broke the record. Both are excellent stories though.

Cost of the hardware: 700$ Cost of the engineering degree: 20,000$ Cost of the fine: 3000$ Cost of driving the speed-limit: Priceless

2019: Hakc the Police! 2020: Defund the Police!

One takeaway I'm getting from this is someone who really wanted to make a laser speed finder robust against attack, really ought to not be using pulses at all, and ought to modulate the laser with spread-spectrum modulation, using a secure random bitstream. Make it more like spread spectrum radar but in the visible band. Of course, that's more expensive to do...

Thanks for putting my MIRT in the slides ;)

"RADAR works by measuring the doppler shift of sound waves" *cringes hard in physicist* although then immediately bringing up a diagram from hyperphysics (praise be) does slightly redeem it IMHO

@26:20 did they try to shut you down, on the MTV?

Ya know, what if we built a system similar to Waze, where we use optical image recognition to detect the location of police vehicles. Or if Waze is up for it, integrate it directly into Waze, essentially automating the reporting of police presence?

flash light at cop: Legal flash light at light: Illegal

This guy is absolute bonkers! Damn, what a talk! Thanks for the upload (sorry 'bout the necrobump).

24:05 This isn't considering the Doppler shift of the transmitted radar signal. It won't look like you are going 65, it will look like you are going 65 + your actual speed, or 65 - your actual speed, depending on if they hit you from the front or back.

This guy was on crystal meth. He used over a million words to say only three things: I used to jam traffic control lights so I could drive through green lights only. 2. I'm a speed freak and I jam radar when driving. 3. I have a device to jam laser radar.

I found 2 police radar guns at a mine so I gave them to a baseball coach I knew for his pitchers, wish I seen this first.

This guy's talk was about 10x longer than it needed to be.

I just drove to a police speed camera van like 4 days ago, (yeah they have those here, they can't even be arsed to do their jobs in a country with speed tickets that increase the more one earns), and now i see this. Interesting..

"Chakotay informs her that the missile was programmed to adapt to all known weapon types, including Starfleet's, but Janeway is optimistic that Voyager's type 6 photon torpedos, which weren't in service yet when Dreadnought was launched, might just get through."

I’m a retired firefighter. The small town I used to work in the police radar will actually pick up the radiator fan speed in the patrol car. They would have to distinguish between the car speeding or the radiator fan.

This mans heart is beating out of his chest from being nervous, who’s wouldn’t be though. Hella cool, smart ass guy

I only watched this video for the Eminem reference, Mr. FBI agent

Aren't radar Jammers a thing you can buy? And also illegal? In Romania I used to know people who used them and got tickets for it.

-97,420,118MPH … oh dear, imagine how confused ANYONE would be if they saw that pop up on their radar gun... 😂

Starts at 10:44

Radio Direction and Ranging

I don't know how but I swear to God my radar/laser detector saved me when I got the laser indicator and I hit the brakes and pulled into the right lane and the guy following me got the ticket.

Wow. Can't imagine why this was recommended to me. A great deal of rambling about how self important this guy and those like him are.

In the USA, Ka band is the band most used by police at around 34.7 MHz and Kustom signals xmits at around 35.5 MHz and are all digital Guns now. Good luck being able to jam all band of radar..

28:15 Miata is always the answer :)

31:00 Virginia is headquarters of CIA

gonna build and use all those things . thanks bill

I'm having flashbacks to 25 years ago when was into this sort of exploring.

26:13 is defiantly a Eminem quote lol Great Talk!

Fantastic speech Bill!

Is Brian Redban playing the sound effects on this podcast?

This man is an American hero

This guy looks like the smarter, intelligent, and more educated version of Joe Exotic. lol Great video BTW!

(2:05) skipCircleJerk&Go-direct-to-Swearingen->

They have a BANGER for us guys! So SMASH that like button!

I'm surprised they don't use pulse encoding techniques. Also, what would happen if just a continuous pulse train of RF/laser was sent back to the detector - i assume this would reduce the signal-to-noise ratio below the threshold required to pick out the reflected pulse?

The best hacker conventions are the ones you don't hear about. ;)

So far 8 minutes in and nothing's been said

I like this dude.

Shout out to KC

Show us how to do this to Stringrays

its one thing living in a society with laws, but when laws are created to oppress us, keep us under check , make sure we,re not having to much fun. Thats when things change.....big time

Love the use of English cars on some slides :P

bills error, explained. Radar doesnt 'reflect' back from trees, it is mainly absorbed by them. dry/dead trees are somewhat invisable to radar. wet trees absorb.

the video starts at 2:01

Virginia is where all the people who designed these systems live and work. They’ve been beating this shit for 40 years, and if you’ve ever driven the beltway you know it’s white-knuckle even at the limit (which you never reach). Hence, speed detectors have been illegal in VA for as long as I can remember.

8:39, I do believe I won spot the fed, LMFAO.

Thank you

release chaff

Ahhaahha. I love this guy. Too funny. Awesome presenter

30:02 lmao I love his presenting style, it's so fun

19:20 - ish.. is the device passive, blindly sending a fixed frequency? If yes, have the radar gun makers started coming out with devices that randomly hop frequencies to counter this? Or maybe they don't see this as a widespread enough issue (yet?) to give any serious attention to. Edit: 25:15 is surely why this wont' become a widespread practice!

When we were kids , we would take all the powder out of fire works and mix them. All together in one big firework and the goal was to make the homemade fire work so bright the street light would turn off. Hecknyea it worked. Alot 😅

"I like what you do, but... you cant do it to me because i know how to stop it"

99.9% efficiency = Not speeding. Add a USAA insurance sticker and I Support local Police and Fire sticker to your back window to achieve 99.9995% efficiency. Legal even in VA.

HOW TO BE 100% EFFECTIVE TO JAM LASER W/O BEING KNOWN YOU AEE JAMMING ?

Question... wouldn't just responding with a continuous beam for the laser overpower even the devices that employ countermeasures? or can they still detect the slight amplitude changes?

Go America! Except for Virginia.

I was waiting to see my channel!

For the laser jammer just send out a constant return. If there is no off to the pulse there is nothing to measure.

That first one is just a box. Orange or chrome or whatever color. You could download the plans when the net was running on dial up.

Awesome talk....thank-you!

The Eminem reference was amazing

27:16 Is light considered a food or a drug?

Hacking is becoming more and more just law work.

Also, at least in most of Europe, there are unmarked police vehicles out and about. They use neither radar or lidar. They simply have a dash cam and they drive at the legal speed limit (+buffer speed) and anyone passing them is deemed speeding and recorded doing so. The police vehicles speed is of course part of the video feed.

29:32 A couple years back I was driving down a main road in town at night and I noticed a green laser dot hit my windshield for a moment. I looked in that direction and sure enough, there was a cop clocking people. This slide says they only use one wavelength, and it's invisible, so maybe that was an aiming laser for a regular radar gun.

And i imagine in the future when we have another million tiny satellites out there in orbit, they will all identify and record moving vehicles and their speeds in real time. Once it detects that a vehicle was speeding it will record that instance and dispatch a police vehicle to intercept that vehicle and give it a speeding ticket. Good luck defeating that!

the actual video starts at 9:30, and it's about old police radars nobody uses. 26:14 quoting Eminem - Without me at about 29:00 it's finally a talk about the lidars

Northrop makes a jammer that looks like a dome with random facets on it. It spins at various speeds. It reflects light and radar and confuses both