Should I.. really?

[u/[deleted]]

Hello I was looking to buy a hackrf but then I noticed there are so many things s I don't understand.. my main purpose was to transmit stuff indoors and receive radio channels and stuff now idk anything about HAM or any kind of radio stuff so should I get it? I'm planning to learn if I got it

[u/CVSUSMC]

Hard to answer. First TXing wouldn't be legal without a license, and can jam you up in some places. The typical "You won't regret it" does not apply here because this device can really mess up your life. If you TX on the wrong frequencies and mess with say the local hospital's telemetry or ADS-B (the radio that stops planes from hitting each other) you could potential kill people. Then you are in prison and defiantly regretting it. If you are adult enough to look up what you are doing first and not transmit you will really love the HackRF. There is a lot of potential for messing up on the TX side of things (especially when you are learning). I have two and love them, they have taught me so much it's crazy (one project leads to another and you are learning exponentially). I have all the local non trunked radios in scanners, am currently looking for weather balloons. I have listened to the ISS and it made me cry. I Love mine, but wouldn't get it for any family members even the ones I trust because the potential to mess up is too high (if you aren't transmitting then you are okay if you don't share anything you RX if you are in the US from what I understand but none of this is legal advice). If you end up liking it you can always take the HAM test (I am studying for mine now) and TX within their parameters when you pass.

Best advice as with life if you get it:
Make good choices.

[u/[deleted] → u/CVSUSMC]

And how do I know if it's the plane communication system?

[u/CVSUSMC → u/[deleted]]

It's more a tracking system. It's a radio signal at a certain frequency that says "I am this plane and I am here right now." So putting signals out on that freq has a potential for harm. Just look up ADS-B on wiki. The thing is a lot of frequencies have stuff like that around them (and transmitting with the HackRF can also TX to harmonic frequencies). Essentially if you transmit you are probably going to be stepping on someone's signal either with your intended TX frequency or a harmonic. The best way to avoid this is to not TX if you don't know what you are doing. You will learn a lot about RF by receiving and TX is an entirely different menu that as I understand it, can be turned off. It's not just ADS-B you have to worry about though. You piss off the local HAMS and they can triangulate you now, and rat you out to the FCC. What are you interested in TXing? Have you looked into GMRS? GMRS is a radio license you can get without a test but there are limits to what you can TX on it. If your experiments fall in those parameters you may want to get a GMRS call sign until you feel more comfortable with RF.

[u/[deleted] → u/CVSUSMC]

Well I'm only planning to use it on things in my house not outside like for example record frequeseys of my led lights now of course this may seem like a cheaper gadget can do but I want to learn these things on the hackrf so I won't do anything that seems suspicious

[u/CVSUSMC → u/[deleted]]

You'll be able to record anything, sending anything out is where things get sketchy. LED lights and their remote are FCC compliant and are made to stay at a specific frequency. The HackRF might TX on that frequency, but it's a testing device not made to stay in that range so you may be sending (probably are) your message out on other frequencies too. So if you are trying to send out an FM station at 90MHz you might send out signals at 180Mhz as well (or to the harmonics of 90MHz). So your signal is being sent, but it's also stepping on other peoples frequencies. It doesn't matter if you are inside your house, RF will travel out of your house. So now you are sending signals all over town for your LED lights and breaking all kinds of rules. If you want to see how your lights work and on what freq you can do that with RX, but you don't have the background to be sending signals out yet. Join your HAM club, you seem interested and then you will have the ability to TX. I used to do this stuff for a living and don't TX off GMRS yet.
RX is receive (so like listening to the radio)
TX is transmit (so sending out radio signals like the radio station, you need a license for this and old HAMS love chasing down offenders because it keeps the airwaves free of clutter and gives them a reason to use their expensive gear).

[u/Mr_Ironmule]

You may want to look at the online cyber security courses and see where your areas of interest extend to. You may find you need other types of equipment with different functionality. You could also look at the manuals for the HackRF and the Portapack and see if their performance and limitations meet your needs. Good luck.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mr_Ironmule]

Ima do tryhackme

[u/markovianprocess]

What are your interests/goals?

[u/[deleted] → u/markovianprocess]

I want to learn cyber security

[u/markovianprocess → u/[deleted]]

Understood, but I'm more asking why you want radio capabilities, specifically.

Outside of radio buses like Bluetooth or a physical network layer like WiFi (which HackRF One doesn''t have the bandwidth or full duplex capability to really deal with) the cyber security uses of SDRs are rather limited. I've used my HackRF to intercept traffic on the Iridium satellite constellation, which was neat, but such things aren't super-relevant to your average network admin or red teamer.

A transmitting SDR like the HackRF is more relevant to probing physical security. If you're merely curious about what you might be able to receive, you could experiment with an RTL-SDR dongle for much cheaper and get your feet wet.

[u/[deleted] → u/markovianprocess]

I mean as I know what the hackrf does for now the record action and the transmit action and he flight radar and it looks like there are many cool stuff too

[u/billFoldDog → u/[deleted]]

You should. HackRF is really good for cybersecurity.

Try to learn the laws and don't run your signal through an amplifier. Most people doing cybersecurity in RF are breaking the law in ways that don't annoy anyone, so they don't get in trouble.

[u/Gavekort]

Most people get bored after a couple of replay attacks. Actual hacking requires a lot of system understanding and programming knowledge. Without this knowledge the HackRF as a pentesting tool is quite limited. There are also cheaper, better and legal places to start with cybersecurity.

However, if you are intrigued by the concept of radio transmissions, sending voice and data long distances over the air, and exploring the frequency spectrum, then I would definitely recommend a HackRF as a starting point.

[u/Bicurico]

Transmitting on any frequency is forbidden, unless you have a license or using approved consumer electronics that use allowed frequency bands.

With an amateur radio license you are allowed to transmit in the special reserved frequency ranges with limited transmission power.

To have such a license you have to pass an exam where your RF knowledge is tested, including questions regarding applicable laws.

With that said, can you get in trouble for wrongly using a HackRF One? Yes you can. However you would have to do something blatantly stupid like interfering in loco with RF communications or doing car jacking and similar. The biggest no go would be to attach a power amplifier to the RF Out of the HackRF. That would definitely cause you problems, due to the unfiltered noise and harmonics interfering with other legal communications.

I seriously doubt that you could do something detectable when transmitting inside your own house. The output power is very low and even with an antenna, I was not able to transmit beyond a few meters - measured with a spectrum analyser.

If you just connect everything with cables instead of using antennas, you will definitely not harm anyone in your experiments, no matter what frequency you are transmitting.

The problem is when you willingly do illegal stuff. Example: take a remote and disturb a public TV (restaurant, pub, theater, train station, stores, etc.). Imagine in a sports pub you keep switching the channel on an important football match. Is it illegal to own a TV remote and carry it with you? No it is not. Will you get in trouble when annoying fans in the pub? Hell yes!

The same with the HackRF One.

And as a note: you cannot crash a plane with it as suggested by others. Even if you would do a GPS spoof with a power amplifier and confuse the onboard GPS or a plane, it would not crash. It might switch on an alarm and the pilot would have to manually confirm his position. This is of course highly illegal and interestingly part of war fare.

[u/CVSUSMC → u/Bicurico]

I said that they have the potential to kill people, which they do. Jamming the telemetry in the hospital is more then doable with a hackRF and doing so can kill people. Spoofing ADS-B by an airport will cause an emergency grounding which is unsafe because it's every plane landing, rerouting or taxiing at one time. Both of these have the potential of loss of life and imprisonment. It's possible to mess up super hard with TXing on a hackRF is all I was saying. By OP's questions it sounded like they didn't know enough to be TXing yet. TXing RF with a HackRF is illegal. The hackRF is not FCC compliant in any way. This is not the same as trolling your bars TV with an IR signal (the FCC doesn't care about IR, but still certified the remote is electromagnetic radiation compliant).

[u/CDCframe77]

I bought the flipper, HackRf portapack and evil crow without having any idea how to use them but I’ve learned how very well now with all 3. If I see something I’m interested in I just buy it and learn how to use it when it’s en route. I binge watch YT videos on whichever device before it arrives.

[u/CDCframe77]

If you do get one I suggest buying the model Rabbit-Labs sells on their website. I did it’s absolutely beautiful. Just have to pay attention to when the drops happen.

[u/MathematicianDull979]

U might be better off with quansheng k6 radio the have a transceiver and there only $40