[digitalradio] Re : testing confirms ROS,,,,,,,,,,,
Well, would you believe it ! So what happens now ? Mel G0GQK
[digitalradio] Re: Testing Confirms ROS Autospot Behaviour
As a (retired) amateur software developer myself I cannot imagine why the developer did it this way instead of letting people pick their own cluster (preferably one located near them) and send their own spots manually. It would have been easier. Connecting to random servers and sending randomly selected text strings is often a hallmark of malware. Perhaps he has developed a clever way of stealing passwords without people realizing it? You know, like those coded messages where the secret text was made from the first letter of every line. I'm not saying it's actually likely but you have to wonder why he has made such a bizarre design decision. If nothing else it shows how easy it is to get people to load software on their computer when they have no real idea who the developer is or what the software may be doing. Julian, G4ILO --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Laurie, VK3AMA group...@... wrote: Yesterday I ran some tests and can confirm that ROS software (Betas 4.5.7, 4.5.8, 4.6.0 4.6.2) is auto-spotting to the cluster without any control from the op. ROS has hard-coded the following Clusters and connects to one of these if possible. dxc.us6iq.com dxc.ham.hr 9a0dxc.hamradio.hr remo3.renet.ru cluster.sk4bw.net ax25.org sk3w.se sector7.nu sm7gvf.dyndns.org I setup my internet router to re-route these addresses (and ports) to a Cluster Node I have setup locally for testing to avoid spotting to the live Cluster. Then left the ROS software in RX mode (no TX) monitoring 20M. Over 20 spots were generated over a 2 hour period. Different comment strings were sent in the spots. A closer inspection of the internal code of ROS reveals randomising code (select a random string) and the following hard-coded Cluster spotting strings. tnx ros mode 73 ROS Mode tnx fer ROS QSO ROS 599 ROS 559 CQ ROS CQ ROS Mode CQ ROS. ROS ros 599 ROS Mode 73, ros mode ROS, 73 tu ROS Mode ROS test copy ROS Mode -SN dB ROS QSO NAME ros mode QTH ROS Mode QTH 599 ROS -SN dB ROS -SN dB at QTH ROS CQ -SN dB ROS. TNX QSO. 73 NAME NAME, QTH are substitued with the configured settings and SN the received S/N ratio. Clearly the use of several variations of text, mixing upper- lower-case letters, 599 559 reports is all designed to make anyone viewing the Cluster think that these ROS spots are Human generated and not auto-spot spam. The ROS developer has NOT documented, in ether the User Guide or FAQ, this auto-spot advertising facility of his software. My observations. de Laurie, VK3AMA
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Testing Confirms ROS Autospot Behaviour
I'm not sure if it still requires it, but many early users gladly gave over their gmail account passwords (required at the time) to the program without question, so why would they care (or even know) if it did anything else? On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 5:25 PM, g4ilo jul...@g4ilo.com wrote: As a (retired) amateur software developer myself I cannot imagine why the developer did it this way instead of letting people pick their own cluster (preferably one located near them) and send their own spots manually. It would have been easier. Connecting to random servers and sending randomly selected text strings is often a hallmark of malware. Perhaps he has developed a clever way of stealing passwords without people realizing it? You know, like those coded messages where the secret text was made from the first letter of every line. I'm not saying it's actually likely but you have to wonder why he has made such a bizarre design decision. If nothing else it shows how easy it is to get people to load software on their computer when they have no real idea who the developer is or what the software may be doing. Julian, G4ILO --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com digitalradio%40yahoogroups.com, Laurie, VK3AMA group...@... wrote: Yesterday I ran some tests and can confirm that ROS software (Betas 4.5.7, 4.5.8, 4.6.0 4.6.2) is auto-spotting to the cluster without any control from the op. ROS has hard-coded the following Clusters and connects to one of these if possible. dxc.us6iq.com dxc.ham.hr 9a0dxc.hamradio.hr remo3.renet.ru cluster.sk4bw.net ax25.org sk3w.se sector7.nu sm7gvf.dyndns.org I setup my internet router to re-route these addresses (and ports) to a Cluster Node I have setup locally for testing to avoid spotting to the live Cluster. Then left the ROS software in RX mode (no TX) monitoring 20M. Over 20 spots were generated over a 2 hour period. Different comment strings were sent in the spots. A closer inspection of the internal code of ROS reveals randomising code (select a random string) and the following hard-coded Cluster spotting strings. tnx ros mode 73 ROS Mode tnx fer ROS QSO ROS 599 ROS 559 CQ ROS CQ ROS Mode CQ ROS. ROS ros 599 ROS Mode 73, ros mode ROS, 73 tu ROS Mode ROS test copy ROS Mode -SN dB ROS QSO NAME ros mode QTH ROS Mode QTH 599 ROS -SN dB ROS -SN dB at QTH ROS CQ -SN dB ROS. TNX QSO. 73 NAME NAME, QTH are substitued with the configured settings and SN the received S/N ratio. Clearly the use of several variations of text, mixing upper- lower-case letters, 599 559 reports is all designed to make anyone viewing the Cluster think that these ROS spots are Human generated and not auto-spot spam. The ROS developer has NOT documented, in ether the User Guide or FAQ, this auto-spot advertising facility of his software. My observations. de Laurie, VK3AMA -- Dave K3DCW www.k3dcw.net Real radio bounces off of the sky
[digitalradio] Re: Testing Confirms ROS Autospot Behaviour
Julian , That's a good point , But from what I can gather this is Mr Ros http://www.thesauro.com/nietoros/ if so then such routines would perhaps be a little dangerous to implement ? I don't really know what the end game will be .. but I have the perception that 'game'may be the operative word . G . --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, g4ilo jul...@... wrote: As a (retired) amateur software developer myself I cannot imagine why the developer did it this way instead of letting people pick their own cluster (preferably one located near them) and send their own spots manually. It would have been easier. Connecting to random servers and sending randomly selected text strings is often a hallmark of malware. Perhaps he has developed a clever way of stealing passwords without people realizing it? You know, like those coded messages where the secret text was made from the first letter of every line. I'm not saying it's actually likely but you have to wonder why he has made such a bizarre design decision. If nothing else it shows how easy it is to get people to load software on their computer when they have no real idea who the developer is or what the software may be doing. Julian, G4ILO --- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, Laurie, VK3AMA groups01@ wrote: Yesterday I ran some tests and can confirm that ROS software (Betas 4.5.7, 4.5.8, 4.6.0 4.6.2) is auto-spotting to the cluster without any control from the op. ROS has hard-coded the following Clusters and connects to one of these if possible. dxc.us6iq.com dxc.ham.hr 9a0dxc.hamradio.hr remo3.renet.ru cluster.sk4bw.net ax25.org sk3w.se sector7.nu sm7gvf.dyndns.org I setup my internet router to re-route these addresses (and ports) to a Cluster Node I have setup locally for testing to avoid spotting to the live Cluster. Then left the ROS software in RX mode (no TX) monitoring 20M. Over 20 spots were generated over a 2 hour period. Different comment strings were sent in the spots. A closer inspection of the internal code of ROS reveals randomising code (select a random string) and the following hard-coded Cluster spotting strings. tnx ros mode 73 ROS Mode tnx fer ROS QSO ROS 599 ROS 559 CQ ROS CQ ROS Mode CQ ROS. ROS ros 599 ROS Mode 73, ros mode ROS, 73 tu ROS Mode ROS test copy ROS Mode -SN dB ROS QSO NAME ros mode QTH ROS Mode QTH 599 ROS -SN dB ROS -SN dB at QTH ROS CQ -SN dB ROS. TNX QSO. 73 NAME NAME, QTH are substitued with the configured settings and SN the received S/N ratio. Clearly the use of several variations of text, mixing upper- lower-case letters, 599 559 reports is all designed to make anyone viewing the Cluster think that these ROS spots are Human generated and not auto-spot spam. The ROS developer has NOT documented, in ether the User Guide or FAQ, this auto-spot advertising facility of his software. My observations. de Laurie, VK3AMA
Re: [digitalradio] Re: Testing Confirms ROS Autospot Behaviour
The other day after making a comment about ROS I got a note (direct) just saying - makes one wonder what else the program is doing. Do you have your banking information on that computer ?
Re: [digitalradio] Re : testing confirms ROS,,,,,,,,,,,
On 07/10/2010 04:56 PM, raf3151019 wrote: Well, would you believe it ! So what happens now ? The first person who warns the ROS users gets banned for life from the ROS email list? :) -- All rights reversed.
Re: [digitalradio] Re : testing confirms ROS,,,,,,,,,,,
The distributor being located in Europe, it may be the EU digital privacy regulations come into play. Cortland KA5S -Original Message- From: raf3151019 gzero...@btinternet.com Sent: Jul 10, 2010 4:56 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Re : testing confirms ROS,,, Well, would you believe it ! So what happens now ? Mel G0GQK
