Bombs are tremendously easy, making them go off at the right moment is the hard part and with a handy open source license plate reader, a camera and a raspberry-pi with one gpio line that just got a lot easier.
Right, but it takes years of immersion in specific fields just to be made aware of the existence of git, let alone grasping the only somewhat related concepts necessary to interface your raspberry pi with your homemade bomb (a whole nother set of skills!) Do you remember your first foray into microelectronics? Let's just say you might not want to use live explosives for your first attempt...
I have a friend who likes to make and print his own 3d models. He built his own 3d printer. I connected the camera he got to his raspberry pi and installed and configured octopi for him because he wasn't confident he could figure it out in a timely manner.
Ok, well let's rephrase that: it would be trivial for me and I hate to underestimate the opposition, they're not all dumb. And the proliferation of IEDs in Iraq suggests that those skills are readily transferable.
If you need more than around 200feet of range, a coathanger as an antenna at each end could probably triple that range, a couple of coathangers fashioned into a pair of 310MHz yagis could likely get you several miles range.
All for less than a Raspberry Pi camera.
Even if you, as a "smart guy" were also a bad guy, would you _really_ consider doing things "the hard way"?
> And the proliferation of IEDs in Iraq suggests that those skills are readily transferable.
Nope, there were a small number of bomb makers who provided the bombs to a distribution network - this network then assigned the bombs to emplacement teams. There was also state level assistance coming from Iran. A few bomb makers and a lot of emplacement teams blew themselves up - so it isn't as easy as Hollywood has portrayed.
ADB-B receiver + cheap drones with simple homing software = total shutdown of US air traffic. I think $20,000 is probably an overestimation of what it would take. There's a lot of asymmetric situations starting to "mature" and defense side is way behind since they're using them to exploit the populace. It's not just a "cyber" problem.
All of the pieces are readily available online, all it takes is someone to put them together. And it's something that pretty much any high school kid with a credit card and interest in electronics could do.
I have a friend who likes to make and print his own 3d models. He built his own 3d printer. I connected the camera he got to his raspberry pi and installed and configured octopi for him because he wasn't confident he could figure it out in a timely manner.