[Battlemesh] FCC Contacts about Wifi Regulations

Paul Gardner-Stephen paul at servalproject.org
Fri Aug 5 11:46:11 CEST 2016


Hello,

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 7:07 PM, Jonathan Morton <chromatix99 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Given this specific use case, an external hardware dongle containing the
> appropriate regulatory database, a firmware update permission flag, and a
> cryptographic signature is indeed an expedient and probably sufficient
> solution.
>
> Any self respecting hardware hacker will be able to clone dongles of this
> sort, but the effort is on the same level as attaching a power output mod,
> which is much harder to defend against.  But if you do the crypto right,
> they won't be able to forge regulatory data out of whole cloth.
>
Right.  In our case, we aren't even interested in defending against
determined and informed persons -- it is sufficient to stop the casual user
from misusing it.


> For deployment, you simply burn and label some dongles, and ship them with
> the base hardware, whose wireless and firmware update capabilities are
> disabled or failsafed without it.
>
> But I would not combine the dongle with the power cable.  Put it in line
> if you must, but keep it physically separate so that the two can be spotted
> independently.
>
We are combining them for convenience, because the "dongle" is just linking
some pins in the connector.


> Incidentally, with this approach it would be feasible to make a
> "worldwide" dongle which permitted setting any established regional
> regulatory domain.
>

Exactly.


> That would be compatible with my preferred solution.
>

Right, and we would expect that orgs like RC would have access to such
cables for when they need them.

Paul.

> - Jonathan Morton
>
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