Mysterious intruder leaves police deaf and dumb

[RescueRanger]

ISLAMABAD: A long, mysterious breakdown in the city police’s communication system on Tuesday left the police wondering and worrying who did it and why.

A senior police officer told Dawn that Channel 4 of the system, meant for the operation wing of the force, went dead at Iftar time and came back to life by itself at 1am on Wednesday.

“That was very sensitive timing for any shutdown as all police stations, operations and patrol officers and picket staff are supposed to be communicating or checking the security situation in the city at Iftar time,” he said.

But on Tuesday, the shutdown left all the SHOs, SDPOs, SPs and other police supervisory staff deaf and dumb for almost seven hours.

“Not only the blockade badly hampered police work but it also put the security arrangements at risk, as the senior officers were not aware what is happening in the city,” he added.

Some supervisory officers used mobile phones to communicate with field officers. Though no incident happened during the crisis, worries increased as the blackout persisted till after midnight when the system came back to life by itself.

What or who blocked the police communication is yet to be established. One police source said Channel 4 can be blocked simply by pressing the ‘Talk’ button of the wireless set. But the source wondered who will hold that button down intentionally for hours.

“We tried to trace that out but we don’t really have the skill or equipment for that,” he added. Though unique, it was not the first intrusion in the Islamabad police’s communication system.

In December 2013, a person, speaking in the name of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, penetrated the system to announce that “the TTP has planted explosives at 10 sensitive installations”, and challenging the police to avert the disaster if they can, according to a police officer.

The Islamabad police have 11 channels for wireless communications but only seven are operational. They are in the use of the Police Headquarters, offices of the Inspector General of Police, Operations, Security Wing and Diplomatic Protection Department, Traffic Police and the Special Branch.

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2015

Mysterious intruder leaves police deaf and dumb - Pakistan - DAWN.COM

 

[Bratva]

This is what happens when you don't encrypt your wireless channels properly

 

[kṣamā]

hmm interesting. I don't think that pressing down "Talk" button on Channel 4 is the only way of shutting down the channel. A decent college electronics guy with correct equipment and a good antenna can shutdown the channel. I do not say it's easy but certainly do able given you know the specifics. This will be very difficult if these radios used encrypted/jam proof frequency hopping radios.
We did something like this in our college campus. Though that was restricted to WiFi signals. But it the theory can be applied to comm radios too.

 

[Mrc]

This is very fishy as this is beyond the capabilities of ordinary religious fanatics and criminals...

Although its an easy thing to do in modern era; but needs training and profesionalism to do so...

 

[RescueRanger]

hmm interesting. I don't think that pressing down "Talk" button on Channel 4 is the only way of shutting down the channel. A decent college electronics guy with correct equipment and a good antenna can shutdown the channel. I do not say it's easy but certainly do able given you know the specifics. This will be very difficult if these radios used encrypted/jam proof frequency hopping radios.
We did something like this in our college campus. Though that was restricted to WiFi signals. But it the theory can be applied to comm radios too.

Islamabad police radio is on 5 tone DTMF Selcal not DMR, the technique you have described above is called barrage jamming this would not work to block one specific frequency, this would jam the entire spectrum from 1446hz to 1530hz, to jam one channel you would need to know the frequency that channel is on then use intelligent spot jamming to isolate and jam that specific channel by disabling the ANI: Automatic Number Identifier, since the DMTF network requires both transmitting station and receiving handset/base station ANI to open squelch, when the transmitting station cannot detect the receiving station ANI it will get scrambled and unable to open a squelch effectively causing the channel to go silent.

This my friends is beyond the skills of a civilian engineer, you need very advanced tech to accomplish along with a very sound understanding of DMTF, FRS and CB UHF/VHF radio operations. Don't be mistaken this was very much deliberate, who every did this knew what they were doing. They were not some kiddo in their basement, any military signals operator here can back me up on this.

Pakistan needs to dump DTMF 20 year old nonsense tech and start thinking about migration to LTE, we should invite Huawei to draft a proposal for LTE solution for Pakistan.