mortified, disgusted and furious

Pretty much every Amateur radio operator works hard to obtain his or her licence and progress in the hobby, I myself am studying for my full licence when I can, however today, and the hobby itself, once again has been spoiled by Chance Callahan KD0MXN.

Sure you will recognise this individual, he is the one that stabbed me in the back the day I went personally to Martin Lynch & Sons to buy my Yaesu FTM-400XDE, and has since committed and planned to commit many atrocities ever since, including harassing me at every opportunity.

This then bring me to the post title, he has since taken it upon himself to hack WiFi routers using the very knowledge he gained during his course and exam for his Technician licence (roughly equivalent to the UK foundation though not entirely), as it has since been learned there is a fundamental weakness in WPA2 that allows someone to gain the key and monitor packets, the full explanation is beyond the scope of this blog as it is focused on radio, and WiFi is relevant as it is roughly in or near the 13cm band (though more accurately just above it).

He intends to build a "cantenna", this is an antenna made from a can of sorts, though he did not specify what can he'd use I can safely assume it would not be made from a potato snack can as this would be useless at 2.4GHz for anything realistic and he would know this too, he did not explain how he'd connect this to a laptop or other device to conduct the attacks.

This act is in gross violation of computer misuse laws worldwide, not only this it puts Callahan in breach of Part 97 of the FCC rules (Part 97 is Amateur radio regulations, similar to Ofcom's conditions here in the UK), and if this does not get his licence revoked I do not know what will, and as he mentioned this in ##hamradio on freenode he may find his door being broken down by the FBI pretty soon, as well as a polite letter from the FCC saying he no longer is eligible to hold an Amateur radio licence.

We can only now hope that this will be the final nail in the coffin for Chance Callahan's life of flouting the rules and laws when he sees fit, there is no place for people like him in the hobby

By the next post I should have calmed down somewhat, and I felt that this was best put out there for all to see.

73 de 2E0EIJ

Edit: I did not read the information correctly and he plans to target 5GHz WiFi routers as well as the exploit I alluded to effects them also, this means that he could be constructing more than one antenna, bearing in mind the information was given out between 6:30 and 7:00am BST today he may well be well into building the antenna assuming he started then (they are 5 hours behind so he may have been asleep for a couple of hours since), readers of the blog in Garden City and Savannah, GA, keep an eye out for suspicious activity on your WiFi