RC Snitch

This is a project for the course «Secure Mobile Systems» at TU Darmstadt. It attempts to demonstrate some implementation flaws with common radio controlled power outlets. It can:

• Send Codes to turn on or off radio controlled power outlets
• Detect whether such codes are send
• React to such codes

Dependencies

• Hardware
  • Arduino Uno or Mega 2560 (other might work too, but have not been tested)
  • 433MHz Transmitter
  • 433MHz Receiver
• Software
  • Python 3.8+ and pip
  • Arduino IDE 1.8+

Setup

Hardware

Connect the transmitter and the receiver to the Arduino as follows:

• On both the transmitter and the receiver connect the pin labelled VCC or 5V+ to the 5V outlet of the Arduino.
• On both the transmitter and the receiver connect GND to the same outlet on the Arduino.
• On the transmitter connect the DATA pin to pin 10 on the Arduino.
• On the receiver connect the DATA pin that is closer to the GND pin to pin 2 on the Arduino.

Software

After installing the Arduino IDE make sure that the Arduino boards are correctly installed with arduino --install-boards arduino:avr. Then clone this repository with git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/sterzy/rc-snitch.git and set up the python project as follows:

pip3 install virtualenv --user
virtualenv .env
source .env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then you should be able to execute the following commands:

• make: This will execute the all target which will just verify the project and create (but not install) the python utility.
• make arduino-upload: If everything works out, this command should upload the Arduino firmware to the board. Per default, /dev/ttyACM0 as the port and the Arduino Mega as the board will be used. These values can be overwritten with the following environment variables:
  • PORT specifies the port that the Arduino is connected to.
  • ARCH specifies the board that is actually used. The following two boards have been tested: Arduino Mega 2560 ("arduino:avr:mega:cpu=atmega2560") and Arduino Uno ("arduino:avr:uno")
• make rc-snitch: This will create the python utility.

Note that at this point the python utility is not installed yet. After executing make rc-snitch install it with the following commands:

pip install --upgrade ./target/dist/rc-snitch-1.0.dev0/dist/rc_snitch-1.0.dev0-py3-none-any.whl
rc-snitch -h

To understand how it works rc-snitch -h can be executed, which display a helpful description of the utility. Every sub-command (send, sniff, block and profile) has its own help message. The utility can be removed with pip uninstall rc-snitch.

Further Reading

• SUI77 - Low cost RC power sockets (radio outlets)+arduino
• This project is based on the rc-switch library: SUI77 - rc-switch
• Arduino IDE CLI Documentation