All technology comes with one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century; hacking. Whether ethical or black-hat hacking, hacking has come a long way over the years and hacking method have been adjusted to suit the advancements in technology. People try every day to get better access to resources while others try to take advantage of what other people have worked so hard for. Even radio waves are not safe! Air-gapped systems are attracting a lot of attention from hackers, with the realization that you can attack isolated devices with different malware through radio frequencies.

It is common belief that devices that are disconnected are impossible to hack. While that has been true in the past, the story has changed from impossibility to difficult, but possible. Hackers can trigger alarm systems and confiscate sensitive information through radio hacking. Here is everything you need to know about radio hacking today.

Radio communication and hacking

Many IoT devices have been exploited through radio signals, by taping on various radio protocols. If you analyze radio communication and different modulation schemes, you will find the need for fastening the security for your network and IoT devices.

Technically, electromagnetic waves are responsible for the swift communication between different IoT devices. These waves include radio signals. For any information to be relayed through radio, the electromagnetic waves to have to come in play. Ideally, there are different ways to categorize electromagnetic waves, and based on the frequency, the type of electromagnetic waves change.

What is a frequency?

Frequency entails the number of times that a radio wave is completed within a particular period. This makes the difference between radio waves and all other kinds of waves, including, Infrared radiation, Ultraviolet light, visible light, X-rays, and Microwaves, to mention a few. Typical radio waves oscillate between 3 kHz to 300 GHz. For you to get started with radio hacking, you must understand how the radio waves work and what frequencies you can tap into to get through the wave.

How radio hacking happens

History records that signal intrusion through radio hacking is not a new thing. Some radio stations have suffered from hacking where hackers intercepted their frequencies to plant information to share with the public. Luckily, for the incidences that have happened, hackers have made it clear that the stations had been hijacked.

When radio hacking happens, the people involved usually gain control over the kind of content that people access in a particular radiofrequency. For example, if you are tuned in to your favorite radio station and you do not like the music they are playing, radio hacking would allow you to play the music of your choice. While that may not be malicious enough, cybercriminals capitalize on radio hacking to intercept message transmission, in a bid to play a message to get a target person and make them act a certain way. Even worse, radio hacking can be used to intercept communication in the security sector, like the military.

For hackers to get through radio transmissions, they have to set up a radio listening station to help gather information on whether or not the information thereof is of importance to them. This step is necessary as one to ensure you are tapping into the correct radio frequency and decoding the hidden radio signals of the right transmission. However, you can also hack a radio to pick up different frequencies and tap into various networks.

Once you are connected to the right radio wave, you can rebroadcast a series of codes into the frequency. This way, you not only access all the information being transmitted through that frequency but also, sabotage the communication and launching an attack to cause havoc. History records hackers who initiated a radio hacking that led to setting off an alarm in Dallas, Texas, which set off sirens that caused a great distraction in Dallas broadcast. You will need to use Raspberry Pi and wire to get this done.

Using Raspberry Pi for radio hacking

With Raspberry Pi, it is easy to hack into a civilian FM radio frequency within 87.5 MHz to 108 MHz. The Raspberry Pi’s general-purpose input-output (GPIO) pin allows you to broadcast in the radio spectrum by connecting to peripherals.

You can get through to one of the frequencies and transmit your messages to the audience of that radiofrequency. You can share audio-based messages with the target audience, change the music, and if you take it a notch further with an app like rpitx, share slow-scan TV images. However, even with Pi, you will need a wire to act as antennae to complete the broadcast signal intrusion. The antenna usually acts as an FM modem for trading data between different devices.

Companies indulge in radio hacking to influence the beliefs of their target audience, against other businesses that play FM radio or vehicle radio systems. The other advantage of radio hacking is that it allows you to convey your message directly to everyone tuned in to a radio frequency while retaining anonymity. All this is highly beneficial to hackers because almost everyone has a radio, either at work, on their car or at home.