[futhey]

When people realized anyone with a sophisticated police scanner could listen in on cordless (and then early cellular) phone calls, it forced manufacturers to actually implement a bare-minimum level of security on those devices.

I hope this pushes more manufacturers to switch to rolling-code algorithms (like the key fob your car uses), in place of simpler, less secure codes that can be captured and replayed.

[tivert]

> When people realized anyone with a sophisticated police scanner could listen in on cordless (and then early cellular) phone calls, it forced manufacturers to actually implement a bare-minimum level of security on those devices.

Did it?

IIRC, the biggest thing to fall out of that is the US government banned scanners that could pick up the frequencies commonly used by cordless phones.

[cruffle_duffle]

> IIRC, the biggest thing to fall out of that is the US government banned scanners that could pick up the frequencies commonly used by cordless phones.

I recall that. I think the age of SDR's made such a ban (law?) almost impossible to enforce.

[dylan604]

When did the age of SDRs begin where these devices were still in vogue? What's the overlap?

[pests]

Who said they overlapped?

OP stated the existence of SDRs now would render such a (new) ban (on scanners) wouldn't work.

[forinti]

In the 1980s a friend of mine had a German radio which had a larger array of frequencies than that available in my country. It allowed us to listen to the police. Curious, but not interesting.

In the 90s my brother had a portable TV/Radio which we managed to tune into cellphone conversations.

Those were the days you could still telnet 25 to send emails with whatever sender you wanted. I used to send Christmas greetings from Santa to my colleagues at uni.

[EA]

In the late 1980's I had this VCR that would allow me to tune into over the air TV channels in the eastern US.

Being an elementary aged student poking around, I realized I could use the tuner to listen in to telephone calls somehow. Granted, I lived on a farm and there were probably only two dozen houses within a mile radius of our home; the nearest being a quarter mile away. I had a small rabbit ear antenna on the back of my CRT TV that could have been plugged into the VCR.

I don't recall the actual hardware I had.

I never figured out if I was listening to cordless phones (seems they would not be powerful enough to reach me), cell phone signals (there were few cell phones in my poor rural community I assume but I guess there could have been travelers on a nearby highway), or CB radio signals from truckers on the highway (these seemed like mundane person to person conversations; not trucker conversations). Perhaps it could have been long distance HAM operators though they didn't seem to use any HAM protocols while speaking.

[ashleyn]

Likely first-gen cell phone service (AMPS)[1]. Calls were entirely unencrypted analogue audio transmitted in bands formerly allocated to UHF television. Your VCR was likely a pre-83 model, which is when the frequencies were reallocated to AMPS[2].

[1]: https://www.telecomtrainer.com/amps-cellular/

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_television_freq...

[porbelm]

Well, DECT wasn't exactly very secure, and neither was GSM (2G) call encryption. And check out the recent TETRA-related CVE's for more fun ;)

https://www.midnightblue.nl/tetraburst

[IshKebab]

Sure though in some cases it isn't worth the cost or effort, e.g. kinetic light switches. In some cases it's appropriate to expect people to not be arseholes.