Can thieves interfere with your wireless security system?
Any
product that promises to protect your home should be subject to more
rigorous scrutiny. For this reason, you will find a lot of strong
opinions about the potential weaknesses of popular home security
systems, which is not surprising. After all, home security is a bit like
playing chess – you want your system to lead as much as possible to the
bad guys.
By far the most likely burglary is a simple
opportunity crime, usually involving a broken window or other cruel
forced entry. According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, in
2013, such crimes accounted for about two-thirds of all residential
thefts in the United States. Most of the rest are illegal, unrestricted
entry, due to things such as windows or garage doors being opened. The
possibility that criminals use technology to bypass the security system
is so small that the FBI does not even track these statistics.
A
major theoretical home security issue is whether a given system is
easily blocked from work. With wired settings, the fear is that thieves
can shut down your system by cutting off the correct cable.
With
wireless settings, you can install battery-powered sensors at home,
monitoring windows, doors, sports, and more. If they detect a failure
while the system is on standby, they will send a wireless alert to the
base station and the base station will issue an alert.
This
approach will eliminate most of the jumper disconnection problems – but
their wireless analog interference? How to prevent the thief from
interfering with your settings and preventing the alarm signal from
reaching the base station by tuning the correct device to the correct
frequency?
As mentioned earlier, the likelihood of such an attack is low – whether successful or not – but let’s look at the facts.
Wireless Jamming 101
The
interference problem is nothing new, nor is it a problem unique to the
security system. Any device that can receive a wireless signal at a
specific frequency will be overwhelmed by a stronger signal received at
the same frequency. In contrast, suppose you want to “jam” the
conversation between two people – you just need to yell at the ears of
the audience.
The interfering radio station needs to
know its broadcast frequency and the appropriate equipment to interfere
with the frequency. It also requires criminal intent because
interference is highly illegal. It is often illegal to buy or sell these
devices that are not properly certified.
Security
devices need to list the frequency of their broadcasts – which means
that potential thieves can find the information they need to know with
the least amount of Google search. However, they need to know what
system they are looking for. If you have a sign in your yard that says
the device you are using, it will point them in the right direction,
although at this point we are talking about a high-target, semi-complex
attack, not It constitutes a forcible entry attack for most burglary.
At
certain frequencies, it is easier to find and acquire interfering
devices than at other frequencies. For example, there are many common
radios that can broadcast over a frequency range of 400 MHz, making it
easier to find things that can jam at these frequencies from the shelf.
Countermeasures
Wireless
security providers typically take steps to help counter the threat of
jamming attacks. Simplisafe, our editor-selected winner, uses a
proprietary algorithm that separates occasional RF interference from
target interference attacks. When the system thinks it is blocked, it
notifies you by a push alert. From there, you will be manually alerted.
Simplisafe
was singled out in a recent article on interference, along with a video
showing that the entire system was effectively bypassed by handheld
interference devices. After taking appropriate steps to control RF
interference to the lab, we tested the attack for ourselves and verified
that it is feasible to use the right equipment.
However,
we also verified the effectiveness of Simplisafe’s anti-jamming
algorithm. It captures our behavior, alerts my smartphone, and lists our
RF interference in the system’s event log. The team behind the article
and the video didn’t mention the algorithm, nor did it mention whether
it detected them.
We like the proprietary features of
this software. This means that thieves may not be able to work through
the Google search algorithm and then find a solution. Even if they can,
Simplisafe claims that its algorithm is always evolving, and it is
slightly different between different systems, which means there is no
universal magic formula to crack it.
Other systems seem
to have confidence in the interference issue. Frontpoint’s team
discussed this issue positively in a blog post on its website, citing
their own anti-jamming software, and claiming that since the company
began offering wireless security sensors in the 1980s, there have been
no successful anti-jamming attacks. Record the case.
Rationality problem
Interference
attacks are absolutely possible. As mentioned earlier, with the right
equipment and the right technology, it is possible to interfere with any
wireless transmission. But how reasonable is it that someone will
successfully squeeze into your home and steal your belongings?
Let’s
imagine that you live in a small house with wireless security settings
that provide a functional anti-jamming algorithm, just like the
algorithm we tested from Simplisafe. First of all, thieves need to
target your home, especially. Then he needs to know the technical
details of your system and get the specific equipment needed to
interfere with your particular setup.
Probably, you
will lock the door when you are not at home in the evening, so the thief
still needs to break in. This meant somehow breaking the lock or
breaking the window. He needs to interfere with you at this point
because a broken window or open door usually triggers an alarm. So, the
same is true for your home’s motion detectors, so once the thief enters
the room, you need to continue to interfere and look for something to
steal. However, he needs to do this without stumbling the anti-jamming
algorithm, and he almost certainly cannot access the details of these
algorithms.
There is no conclusive data on the
frequency of interference as a form of theft technology, but when you
start thinking about these real-world practices, it is easy to accept
requests like “a frontier”, and interference attacks are rare. It’s hard
to imagine that our hypothetical thief would choose a house with no
security system at all.
Bottom line
In
the end, these systems were designed primarily to prevent opportunistic
shattering and looting attacks that constitute most burglary. They are
also just a single layer, ideally a multifaceted approach to protecting
your home, including common sense things like solid locks and proper
nighttime exterior lighting.
No system is impenetrable,
and no system guarantees complete elimination of the worst. Each of
them has weaknesses, and theoretically knowledgeable thieves can exploit
these weaknesses. A good system is a system that makes the worst case
as untrustworthy as possible and provides strong protection in the
unlikely event of a serious attack.