TLDR: Nerds and hammers discover that connecting radio receivers to the internet is not always a good idea. Turns out every one of these popular $350 software-defined radios can be fully controlled and modified remotely with the right admin credentials. They are NOT happy that the creators coded a backdoor into their favorite radio. On top of that, these radios are capable of decoding GPS signals, so their locations are now compromised too.
The creator of KiwiSDR, after letting it slip that he had a backdoor, immediately went into damage control mode and erased any mention of it from his posts. He is now pretending on GitHub that he didn't know about this and is releasing a patch to cover it up.
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I thought a lot of these Linux SDRs are around $40 (not including a PC or laptop). Can't they just switch to using some other free software or does KiwiSDR need a subscription?
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Not really, because KiwiSDR runs a Linux kernel and I don't believe you can flash it. They could use a different software to interpret the data that it sends over USB, but that wouldn't change the fact that the onboard Linux kernel still accepts connections from the creator, because that part lives on the board.
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Darn that sucks. I was thinking about getting into SDR stuff but now I know what I won't be using
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KiwiSDR is the only SDR that gives you full access to kiwifarms-over-hamradio-over-avian-carriers
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