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Comment by sammy2255 | Hacker News Reader

This has gotta be some sort of federal crime

I believe this was "spoofed" only in the sense that a particular provider/online platform accepted data via an API that was abused to draw this on that platform only. Searching around it seems it was not found if you looked on other platforms, so it might not even have been a crime. I believe they didn't emit any real "signals" just took advantage of an API that should probably be better secured.

At worst it'd be a violation of the site ToS - it's a crowdsourced community data based system, and not any sort of an official, important system. The account doesn't seem to have been banned, so maybe the admins are just rolling with the joke.

> an API that should probably be better secured.

I think the API is secured? The entire premise is that a volunteer creates an account and uploads ADS-B telemetry. Detecting falsified data is a separate matter.

Sounds like authentication is working great, but their authorization design may be flawed.

How is it flawed? That is the nature of crowdsourcing.

Doubt it did anything in RF, only sent packets to adsbexchange’s web service that its volunteers feed it.

Also Adsbexchange has had some… history:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/10l2euc/adsb_exchange...

https://hackaday.com/2023/01/26/ads-b-exchange-sells-up-cont...

ADSB sites aren't any sort of official thing. You can send whatever data you want to them. Just because it's there doesn't mean it ever went over the air as an ADSB broadcast.

Agreed with other commenters that nothing was likely actually broadcast, but if it was it would definitely be highly illegal and you’d have feds knocking down your door pretty quickly. They don’t joke around with illegal transmissions like that.

It's almost certainly a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because it's an extremely broad law.

TBF so is your reply and mine.

Violating terms and conditions is not a CFAA violation, per the Supreme Court case Van Buren v US (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/03/supreme-court-cyber...) which narrowed to actual fraud and data theft.

"The Government’s interpretation of the statute would attach criminal penalties to a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity,” Barrett wrote. “If the ‘exceeds authorized access’ clause criminalizes every violation of a computer-use policy, then millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens are criminals."

adsbexchange is a user-generated content platform where you can submit decoded radio signals to a common database. Sending fake data to adsbexchange is as much a CFAA violation as posting hoaxes to Wikipedia or a social media platform.

Precedent won't get in the way of a tribal retaliation. They've proven that they can't be consistent with fundamental laws they've sworn to uphold.

An interesting question.

Assuming the FAA has the authority to enforce ADSB requirements (an open question post-Chevron), I can’t find any regulation saying non-aircrafts cannot transmit ADSB. Only ones saying aircrafts in certain categories must.

There’s probably some non-interference requirement somewhere (FCC spectrum licensing perhaps), but I’m not seeing it immediately.

All this is in the hypothetical that RF was transmitted, which as others point out it probably wasn’t.

(Assuming this were actually RF)

This is easily-prosecutable willful interference or possibly aircraft sabotage: ADS-B operates in licensed bands and uses an already highly-contended modulation scheme and transmission protocol.

No reason to believe RF when you can just upload whatever data you want

They'll probably try and make a case of wire fraud and CFAA as the usual go tos if it wasn't in RF.

"Wire fraud" means financial fraud, not "sending data over wires".

It would be under the FCC regs, not the FAA regs.

Whatever transmitter you're using would not be type-accepted for operation on the 1080 MHz or 978 MHz band. (47 USC § 301)

Additionally, RF operation with the intent of willful interference is inherently illegal. (47 USC § 333)

Excellent, thanks.

What if you removed a genuine ADS-B unit from a plane and installed it in your vehicle?

Also does impersonation necessarily qualify as interference? Naively, I'd expect interference to refer to jamming.

A transponder in a car is not an "aircraft station" (§ 87.5), therefore it is not covered by aircraft "license-by-rule" (§ 87.18(b)), so transmitting would be operating without a valid authorization (§ 1.903(a)). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...

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