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TheDaoistTech t1_j7w4aw7 wrote

Reply to comment by SkunkMonkey in Chinese spy balloon carried 'multiple antennas' for collecting signals intelligence, State Dept. says by StevenSanders90210

That was my first guess as well. Most likely SIGINT collections looking for "vulnerabilities in the signals". i.e. "stuff we can jam/disable if/when we attack"

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SkunkMonkey t1_j7ws2wj wrote

Everyone was freaking out about how it would take better pictures than satellites, yada yada, and all I could think of was wardriving and the likelihood it had zero optics.

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geophilo t1_j7x1wz9 wrote

Could you explain wardriving?

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5DollarHitJob t1_j7x2xtd wrote

From Wikipedia

>Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks, usually from a moving vehicle, using a laptop or smartphone. Software for wardriving is freely available on the internet.

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Moxxxie_au t1_j7x89bu wrote

Wardriving for 4G/5G?

I doubt standard 802.11 would have the range to be monitored up there.

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redhatch t1_j7xl6yn wrote

No way they’re looking for WiFi. You’re lucky if those signals make it ~300 feet from the access point, let alone 60,000.

Even cell signal is probably relatively unlikely as the antennas on cell towers are highly directional and aim most of their signal towards the ground.

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yourewrong321 t1_j7yg5af wrote

Ever try getting LTE in a plane? The China ballon was even higher. There’s no chance

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jonathanrdt t1_j7xut6t wrote

All transmissions would be encrypted, so you wouldn’t learn anything intercepting the traffic. But you sure could learn the frequencies and how to disrupt them.

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KimJongIlSunglasses t1_j7xwiif wrote

Or they can crack the encryption since they make all the electronics.

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TheDaoistTech t1_j7y2hhf wrote

Not very likely I would posit. Too much effort to crack the encryption without some super stealthy backdoor method. Not impossible but unlikely as the backdoor to the crypto would have to be pretty beefy or be some sort of "shortcut" in the crypto that somehow has flown under the radar for so long as whole panels of independent experts have been perusing over since the RSA debacle.

More likely and easier to implement would be a hardware killswitch. Turning something "off" is much simpler and cheaper. Hypothetically speaking while I place this mass of tinfoil around my head; One well placed relay in the baseboards or some triggered logic patch that dumps source power to critical components and you bring down whole systems in one fell swoop. Pretty stealthy that way too because it's simple. Simple gets lost in complexity as the complexity acts as noise in the design documents. Government based systems are very much paranoid about this sort of thing so I doubt you would see this in anything like the US nuclear arsenal where they were floating these balloons.

Though with that sort of testicle tight grip on the supply lines in the consumer markets; they could cripple lots of other supporting things that aren't as stringent with their hardware/software sources. Communications, traffic controls, water, power, hell even sewer, so on and so forth. Look at how pissed people get when their internet goes out. Imagine how they react when EVERYTHING goes out and the toilet is backing up! Lots of chaos and turmoil for us to handle all at once!! Emergency response would be paper thin and stressed to the max! Cats marrying dogs outside of wedlock! We're doomed!!!

Ahem... Taking the tinfoil off... The likelihood of such a thing is still pretty darn slim. Lots of hobbyists have been peeling back baseboards and ICs without any permission from the manufacturer and voiding their warranties for a few decades now and nobody has spotted a whiff of stuff like this. We're post "clipper chip" discovery where folks will expose anything for internet clout.

I'm not confident enough to say it's impossible. Just very unlikely they have this sort of capability.

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