Welcome to the new FlexRadio Community! Please review the new Community Rules and other important new Community information on the Message Board.
If you are having a problem, please refer to the product documentation or check the Help Center for known solutions.
Need technical support from FlexRadio? It's as simple as Creating a HelpDesk ticket.

Security Model(Policy) for WAN?

Takeshi Yamada
Takeshi Yamada Member ✭✭
edited April 2020 in SmartSDR for Windows
Do we have any concrete idea of security policy, security model when we talk about connecting Flex6000 directly to WAN?
Connecting to WAN is not an issue of software, authentication and authorization (many software are available), but how it is implemented upon the needs of individual station situation - requiring flexibility to implement the individual policy and how easy to implement it is the key.   Also, the IP packet may need to be encrypted to prevent from others taking over - stealing.

Are these all the responsibility of the firmware in Flex6000?
  
Is not it better to have "Station Control Master" that manages authentication/authorization, encryption of the communication, address translation to connect to Flex6000, station power switches, antenna tower, rotor, linear amps, and safety monitors, camera, video?

I believe that the firmware is better focus more to improve the quality of receiving and transmitting abilities, like pre-distortion, better NB, NF, etc to make Flex6000 superior to other competitors and not serve much for peripherals like security.


Just for your thought to V2.0  (Too early to mention?)

de JI1BNU, JA2IYJ/1
Ken Yamada

Answers

  • Chris DL5NAM
    Chris DL5NAM Member ✭✭✭
    edited April 2020
    Let the boys at Flex do there job. We still wait for real diversity (with GPS), for full WAN support and other things.

    How do you secure a NAS, a server, a PC, a local network? With a station control master?
    Flexradio is a normal IP device with a MAC address in WAN like every other Ethernet device.

    And what secret data's included in your Flex? Your config of function keys? Your setup? :-)

    Do you worry any hacker can hear what you talking via radio? :-))

    So start your security at your router/firewall. That's the door to your LAN. Not the Flexradio!
    It's your job, not Flex.
  • Jay -- N0FB
    Jay -- N0FB Member ✭✭
    edited December 2019
    As the the underlying OS for the 6000 family is a Linux distribution, the ability to secure the application and network traffic using robust controls should be a relatively known quantity and straightforward conceptually.  There is hard work ahead for FRS Engineering team to be sure, but fortunately they will not be rediscovering the wheel.  

    The receive and transmit voice data will very likely be encapsulated by an audio CODEC. The likely candidate for this CODEC will be (is) an open standard. However, it not will not be, by any stretch of the imagination. ubiquitous on the internet such as a MP3 CODEC would be.  Without the appropriate CODEC client installed on the remote computer, the Flex 6000 audio data stream is useless. This could be considered a soft level of security through obscurity.
  • Takeshi Yamada
    Takeshi Yamada Member ✭✭
    edited September 2014
    That is exactly what I wanted to say. 
    If the current server/client model being extended to WAN, the server, firmware, needs to take care of security.  However, I believe that it is the job of the another software like application server and may not be the job of FRS.
    Client side SmartSDR is a different story.  I expect it handles multiple server access at the same time, synchronize frequencies for experimenting DoIP - diversity over IP using DAX IQ from each server.  I do not know if it is a workable idea or not.

    Paradoxical question may not be within my capability of English and may make confusions.

    73 de JI1BNU, JA2IYJ/1
    Ken Yamada 
  • Takeshi Yamada
    Takeshi Yamada Member ✭✭
    edited September 2014
    Yes, I understand that there are many softwares for security available and OS itself is robust enough as I myself have been playing with FreeBSD since it was called 386BSD.
    I just wanted to say paradoxically that FRS devotes to the performance improvements rather than networking.   Seemingly, it was not understood that way.

    73 de JI1BNU, JA2IYJ/1
    Ken Yamada

Leave a Comment

Rich Text Editor. To edit a paragraph's style, hit tab to get to the paragraph menu. From there you will be able to pick one style. Nothing defaults to paragraph. An inline formatting menu will show up when you select text. Hit tab to get into that menu. Some elements, such as rich link embeds, images, loading indicators, and error messages may get inserted into the editor. You may navigate to these using the arrow keys inside of the editor and delete them with the delete or backspace key.