You’re absolutely right. If it’s encoded to a specific system you can hear it as long as you can receive the same system - if it’s encrypted no chance and even if you did have equipment to pick it up, you have to have a security key and good luck with that.
@USMC-Sniper-0137 no fyi if you carry an active ham radio license, you can do any experimental radio you want, some states like california you cant even have a scanner in your car, unless you hold a active ham radio license! 73 KG7POU
I do not know of a scanner any where that can decifer encrypted radio at all. It has been said that SDR with extra software add ons can . I am looking into that myself but have not found a working system yet. They will keep us gaining an understanding and a education if nothing else. . No scanner can do that.
We can thank all those running around with a police scanner while breaking the laws, for this encryption! Now they can take down drug dealers etc......
Well, they're not doing a very good job taking down all these supposed "drug dealers" with all this modern technology that they have. In my opinion, if we're paying for this, we should have access to it. The last thing I remember is the taxpayers are still paying for all of this.
No, it’s impossible to recover the key from an individual radio. That’s a safety measure to prevent just what you’re talking about. There’s also something called OTAR. The system administrator, radio dispatch, etc., will send out a new key over the air occasionally. All radios assigned to the system will get a new key and it’ll be seamless to those in the field. If a radio is stolen, or lost, the radio is removed from the system, if on a TRS, and a new key sent OTAR.
First off if you had stolen the radio which is the only way this would happen NO YOU CANNOT for anyone stupid enough to try. The radios CPS is locked with a strong passcode. You would only be able to use the radio. Nobody would be able to plug in the radio to a computer to access the radio without the passcode. Also the radio techs for the dept involved can remote wipe the radio over the air. So the radio would be immediately rendered into a brick.
The encryption key is basically a password to protect the data in transit Think of it like writing a coded message to a friend (the authorized operators), if someone intercepted it (a scanner) they'd need the one time pad associated with the message (encryption key) to be able to understand what they're reading (convert the mess of audio into something intelligible) TlDr, it's a password that is combined with data during a transmission so that unless you have the password, you'll just hear a mess of audible garbage. Exactly how they do this is a mystery to me, although you didn't ask for such an explanation so I'll leave my late comment here Also, to answer your other question. Scanners are incapable of having a key to an encrypted system for many reasons ranging from legality to rolling codes (some depts issue a new "password" to all authorized radios on a certain basis) In short, the key today could be 1234567890 and tomorrow could change to 0987654321 which is why it's impossible for them to do this. Further, to my knowledge it's impossible to convert say an SDS100 to be capable of storing a key and decrypting radio traffic with it. You'd need a dedicated radio like the ones LEO use to be able to even get started
I am curious about listening to scrambled, specifically non public safety, like marine radios and business radios have a scramble function, if I pay 500 dollars for a scanner can I listen to a 30 dollar scrambled walkie talkie
In short, no. Not legally anyway. No off the shelf plug n play equipment that’ll do that. If you’re smart enough to accomplish it, all by your lonesome, you could write your own ticket working for the NSA.
@@jakemccain9825 - Not all scramble functions work across the board equally. Do some research on the different types of encryption out there, one size doesn’t fit all. The Chines radios you mentioned, if they’re brand A (Baofeng, Anytone) and you attempt to use them with brand B (TYT, Tytera) they won’t be compatible even if using the same key, if that’s even possible. And if you happen to try and listen to an encrypted signal, you’ll have a full time job on your hands 24/7/365 trying to figure out the key they’re using. The Chinese radios you mentioned probably only allow encryption when using a digital mode. Marine frequencies are analog, the encryption in the Chinese radio won’t work unless it’s in digital mode and must be the same type the marine radio operator is using.
weird question. You can buy a digital scanner and listen to scrambled signals of encrypted radios if you wanted to but why would you want to? Its a bunch of noise.
That was my next point I was going to bring up that's how the criminals will basically listen to the police calls by cracking the key. That's right I said it they would crack the key and basically they can do major damage. But as for right now basically encryption works anyway.
The keys are changed randomly with Over the air authentication. There isn’t just 1 key. So no they don’t crack it. Most likely they’ll “borrow” a scanner from a cop…
That's funny cuz with my SDR and a computer I can decrypt anything I want granted depending on how fast your computer is it may be slightly off real time but it's still possible
ok please tells us all how this is done, you took the time to tell us now give us the information we need to do it, also provide the information on the service (ie) police fire or what, what city is it in what county and the information on the encrypted service you are listening to. Can't Wait to get all the information from you and I'm sure all other people are waiting too. Oh PS I have a SDR and a really fast computer.
Anything you want eh? As Alan Turing once said of Enigma: “Any schoolboy with an AM kit is capable of receiving the messages; the trick is they’re encrypted” _If you have the right key_, of course it will be in near-real time as any computer in the last decade has hardware support for for all modern ciphers including AES (though software implementations are fast enough). If you don’t have the key and they’re using say, AES256 encryption, it is so strong that -> "If every atom on earth (about 1.3 * 10^50 atoms) was a computer that could try ten billion keys a second, it would still take about 2.84 billion years." The actual number of possibilities is 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936. Good luck breaking that with your “really fast l337 h4x0r computer”. Anyone that has found a weakness in AES or OTAR would not be bragging about it on RU-vid, and if you’re bragging about breaking the weaker ciphers, you’re about 2 decades late to the party. Don’t be a troll.
Some people think they are so cool because they have a SDR and play with it. I run a broadcastify feed for my local county simulcast. I built the trunking scanner myself. If you had a million years you wouldnt be able to break a AES 256 bit encrypted transmission. Now if you were a government of a country and had access to a $100 million super computer and had a programmer who is an expert in communications write some code I'm sure it can be done. But you with the SDR you will have to resort to listening to garbled transmissions.
Steve I'm glad you know about encryption more than I do but I'll tell you what if all scanners are not going to be able to pick up encrypted frequencies then we're going to have a very very serious problem because in my mind criminals will figure out a way to basically find out where law enforcement is whether the radios are encrypted or not because to tell you the truth if somebody's law enforcement agencies go through with their plan to encrypt their Police radios then this is going to create a problem basically newsrooms across the country will not be informing anybody with those encrypted radios they'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. And this is why I am saying right now that there are concerns about that and I have a big concern about it myself true because this is going to basically tell us that we can't listen to police calls that's a shame. But you know what it might be all said and done and it might be all well and good. But, there are major concerns. As a matter of fact I just found out a few months back Portland did the same thing Oregon that is all of Portland's radios are encrypted now all of them so you cannot only pick up Portland Police scanner radio traffic but you can only pick up Multnomah county instead they're not encrypted yet but pretty soon every law enforcement agency in the country will be totally encrypted and that's got major concerns. Especially for people like me. Because I can tell you right now it's a go ahead and do this? Things are going to get real nasty. And it's going to get real bad. Because criminals will figure out a way to listening to the police calls whether they're encrypted or not.
A lot is done on laptops and not much is done on the radio anyway in some areas. A lot of criminals these days don’t sit around and listen to a scanner to “know” where the cops are. Most cruiser contracts today are equipped with gps built in so dispatch if equipped can see where each asset is in real time. So they may say over the radio we have a call for you check your laptop or whatever they call it. Fire has headed that way as well in some bigger cities.
@@willdunham6724 i work for a large municipality. Not in pd but in electrical emergency services. They quit using radios all together around the time when I started, and just use text messages on phones to dispatch. Occasionally pd dispatch or water depart dispatch will call. But we dont have any radios anymore. They are big and cluncky and arnt really useful unless there is a real emergency like a natural disaster or something. Realistically only a HF radio would do anygood in a real emergency either way and no one really has those. Even the older radios needed a tower and dispatch center which could bring the whole thing down if it ever went out. Digital only makes sense from a tactical perspective. You use encrypted radio comms when you are in an area where your enemy operates. If We the people are the enemy, then something is very wrong
@@trakeC I understand but a lot of things over the air don’t need to be said. Going Enroute, some other things, they can’t get rid of everything. Things that have to happen in real time have to have a human interaction, not just press a button. Some places people are following responders and what not. If you know how to listen and what to listen on you can figure out what’s going on around you!!!
@@willdunham6724 ya. I live in a small town in a different county. I listen to the local pd at home. But i cant listen to the pd in the area where I work because its encrypted. I dont think it should be. The ticket system we use handles most calls. It assigns non emergency tickets to areas in different departments. Then the people in that area assign the ticket to show they are en route. But from a needing back up or going to an emergency its handled from a person for sure
@@trakeC I understand that. Some counties don’t like sending personal identifiable information over the air as just about anyone with the right equipment can hear who just got pulled over and name dob and what not. Nice to know about bigger incidents around you but policies keeping peoples info protected should be a priority. A lot can be done with that info.
So I do agree with you . But as for it being illegal to do that depends on where you are . Me being in Canada. The law is a bit different. We can listen to whatever is in the airwaves where we live. As long as you do not alter and or interfere with it. And as long as you do not tell more than two people what you have heard. It is a hobby and we are getting an education just to keep up.
Ok I could be behind about 10 years. And that's why nobody wants to come out and talk about it . I am going to start getting into SDR . Get into cell phone listening.
@@larryhicks9093 Someone who is also a Canadian and has no idea how any of these radios work but is interested in listening to police frequency's (trunked/encrypted) whatever you call it, is it still possible? What equipment is needed? Of course just as a hobby.
@@SimulatorsStudio If it it only trunked that is very easy to be able to listen to . With the new scanners. The only way that I can hear my police . Is when they turn the encryption system off to do updates. Which is on Sunday morning.
We've been dealing with encryption for years in the UK with TETRA airwave and now the new ESN phone system. Imo we are our own worst enemy posting videos of talk groups and radio ids over the Web. While a lot of users may not mind this and even participate. You have to think of the importance of emergency services and private data. They would be daft not to encrypt their comms these days. Imagine walking into work on Monday morning and seeingwhat you thought was your workers private comms splattered all over FB?. As I said, we are out own worst enemy.. Her in Scotland UK we have made do with small business /amateur dmr marine, airband for years now. Plenty of interesting stuff especially when you track it using sdr with ais / ADSB programs. Nice video thanks for sharing
Thanks for the post, I totally agree with you statement. In Canada the law was you can listen to anything on your scanner except encrypted communications as long as you do not talk about it and divulge any information, but times changed with the internet and every were you look people are passing on what they hear, and this is one of the reasons everyone is encrypting their communications down this way now in Canada
Who would know of the European digital police radio systems and how to hack in and listen in to them today? who is an authority on the digital radio system RAKEL is a system based on a digital standard TETRA "Terrestrial Trunked Radio" which is used within the EU for "blue light systems". The frequency band is 380 to 395 MHz. anyone that know about this and who on RU-vid that is great authority on educating in this system? please let me know, is my passion to understand radio networks and smart phone hacking. Am not a criminal, but is passion about this tech and like to learn and understand. thanks!
Most EU Countries use Tetra which uses the TEA2 encryption algorithm which is extremely secure with all the authentication protocols in place. It will never be hacked/broken by a member of the public.
after very little search on RU-vid it shows it been hacked since ten year back and many times the vulnerabilities been exposed.... so not sure what fantasy world you live in?@@jamiemoo2000
How to tell if there encrypted or simulcast I find hard to believe all these outside agencies especially analog can even hear or assist that city if encrypted so I feel this encrypted shit is bs n they went from digital p25 to p25 simulcast which 95% of scanner can't receive it no encrypted jus trying to get 2 signals at once n why the gurgling crap especially if u have 2 dispatchers using the system make sense don't it ur scanner is locked on a tower while there signal is jumping towers n scanner says wtf is going on there are only 3 as of now that pick up simulcast explains why everyone thinks there encrypted...not hard jus like when they left analog to digital did everyone scream oh no they are encrypted now I bet they did
NO, if you do that all they will do is turn it into a brick, there is a chip in all radios to shut them down they will stop working and while you are trying to figure out what is going on there is also another chip inside all radio, it's a GPS chip. And the police can track the radio and arrest you for theft.
2 funny things about this 1. They can gps locate the radio, 2. They can brick the radio over the air before you can use it. 3. You cant access the radio because the programming is locked 4. Go to jail. Like that shop lifting lady on the news that thought she would never be caught was arrested.
@@TheTAEclub you could take the battery out but what are you going to do with it after that? The moment it's powered up its bricked over the air after it was located on gps plus it cannot be read on a cps programming because its protected.
If a system goes encrypted, it should be know that most encrypted systems have DEFAULT channel assignments. First of locate the Control Channel - they have distinctive digital sounds. Take a portable transceiver, tune the transmitter to the control channel and blast away. All receivers within distance of your jamming transmitter will be disabled then users will be automatically be switched to CLEAR VOICE, or Dispatch will switch them to CLEAR VOICE. P25 has been cracked. SDR equipment is best for monitoring channels / systems of interest. Nothing funnier than watching a Cop losing the ability to call home. Whilst you are about, jam the GPS - that disables the Cop's "Come Here" facilities.
Dafuq you talking about? How the holy Hell would you be able to purchase a transmitter capable of jamming a data control channel with enough RF power to accomplish that? BTW, encryption doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t “default” to anything unless something has happened to the radio physically. Some portable radios will lose their encryption key if the battery is removed for an extended period for example. Forgot to add, P25 doesn’t need to be “cracked” as its a modulation scheme that’s been around for 30(?) years.
@@dereklea1183 Some systems would go to clear mode when a carrier went into the channel (UK system for exemple), but not the case with every syatem now. Interlaced jamming renders the system inoperative and is very difficult to spot...
If by any chance I could get ahold of the decryption key for a particular channel, can it be entered into the SDS100 or any other digital scanner like the Whistler TRX-1?
Well please tell me how I am going to listen to all the agencies that I want to listen to that are encrypted. I want to let you share this information with everyone. Make sure you are very clear. Steve
No, digital scanners are required by the FCC to ignore encryption. If you got a Motorola XPR 2500 e, and you were able to obtain the encryption key, you would be capable of listening Tldr, you can get access with certain methods, but a scanner will not and is incapable of decrypting. FCC prohibits scanners from listening to encrypted signals by reasonable means (they can't always detect it, but when they do they must ignore the signal) Alternatively if you were able to obtain a radio directly from your police department or sheriff's office, you would have direct access. That's a federal offense (stealing a radio) so don't dewitt Best bet is see if your local LEO offices allow reporter access, or try and make a buddy on the inside. Theoretically you could start your own news broadcasting station and they would be legally required to provide you access to their systems, that way you can inform the public of a situation. Not sure how the process works as far as setting up your own station but that's another option. (bear in mind however that the XPR2500e is not P25 and does not go up to the 800mhz range many LEOs use these days. You'd have to find a transceiver for P25 (or whatever system type you plan on listening to like DMR (XPR2500E), NXDN, etc) capable of monitoring the bands you wish to decrypt)
Please take the time and explain how to setup SDR to listen to encrypted communications, please give details, what sdr your using and how to go about this.
@@larryhicks9093 Hi Larry Don't expect any useful information On how to do this, from experience I know of no way of doing this that would be helpful to anyone. And also even if there was a way it's illegal.