newswise.com — Members of Cornell University's Global Positioning System Laboratory have cracked the so-called pseudo random number (PRN) codes of Europe's first global navigation satellite, despite efforts to keep the codes secret.
Jul 8, 2006 View in Crawl 4
scrubadubJul 8, 2006
remember kids use /dev/random not /dev/urandom...yeah probably over a few heads
nanitoJul 8, 2006
LOL, i agree!, i mean, what's that bizarre/inconsistent analogy? Maybe the guy liked poetry but... well ended studying system engineering because it pays better ;)
petzluxJul 8, 2006
The time analogy is not completely correct, as it is a huge over simplification to say that receivers can directly measure the time difference from their watch and the time signal of the gps satellite. As it would be technically not possible to integrate the same precision clocks of the satellites in the receivers, and syncronise them, the receiver cant directly tell the time difference merely by comparing signal runtime with its own clock time. The pseudocode thus allow the receiver to have a rough idea of the travel time of the signal, with the remaining uncertainty then folded into the algorithm as another variable, DeltaT . thus to resolve the position the receiver needs to solve 4 unknowns eg XYZ and DeltaT instead of theoretically only the position XYZ . Thats also why a GPS receiver needs to have a lock on 4 satellites to get a 3D position (each unknown needs at least one signal to be resolved basically). The more satellites in view, the more accurate the algorithm can then resolve the position and DeltaT. Thus the PseudoCode needs to be known by the receiver otherwhise the receiver wouldnt work. Thats why i think this wasnt such a huge crack as the pseudocode is not designed to be hard to crack.
keng6Jul 8, 2006
For those like me whose heads it was over... <a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urandom">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urandom</a>
nevbear666Jul 8, 2006
@wakazivacause they couldnr1 reason for most ppls to do things...and no, i am not going into explaining that security by obscurity doesnt work.
jmn2k1Jul 8, 2006
They government pay to make the system... so, they think they can used it...It could be a lot of things... but no "sad"...
jasqwertyJul 9, 2006
What the hell does that patent have to do with anything related to what is essentially a giant accurate clock. You do realize that's all the GPS system is?The Europeans have tried to copyright WHAT TIME IT IS.But whatever, hate on you ignorant piece of crap.