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Dog-like robot jams home networks and disables devices during police raids — DHS develops NEO robot for walking denial of service attacks (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 4 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced that it has developed a four-legged robot designed to jam the wireless transmissions of smart home devices. The robot was revealed at the 2024 Border Security Expo and is called NEO. It is built using the Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) and looks a lot like the Boston Dynamics Spot robot.

According to the transcript of the speech by DHS Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) director Benjamine Huffman, acquired by 404 Media, NEO is equipped with an antenna array that is designed to overload home networks, thus disrupting devices that rely on Wi-Fi and other wireless communication protocols. It will thus likely be effective against a wide range of popular smart home devices that use wireless technologies for communications.

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[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, if you’re using common words or variants thereof, you’re gonna have a bad time. But a 128 character string of random characters is going to be functionally safe from such an attack, for now.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

And you'll go crazy every time you try to add a device that doesn't support QR code scanning.

Just use multiple dictionary words with a symbol or two thrown in. Or go all out and set up 802.1x with client certificates and save the PSKs for a firewalled segment of less important crap.

Although it's worth mentioning that wireless security means nothing to jamming. Jamming is RF, it's destroying layer 1 before WPA matters.