Somerdata will be highlighting the AROW Data Diode, demonstrating its use in protecting high security networks and process control applications and its real-time GBE streaming capability.

Converters

E1SS-1080 Data Sheet  – 1 to 4/ 1 to 8 E1 active Splitter

E1DT_Data_Sheet -simple single E1 active splitter

E1SS-8040 Data Sheet – E1 Crosspoint switch and router

AOS-OC3-124 Data Sheet – STM-1 Optical active splitter

AOS-OC12-124 Data Sheet – STM4/STM-1 Optical active splitter

E1UC_Data_Sheet – USB powered E1/T1 Recorder/Replayer/Splitter Router

Recorders

PC-VDR Data Sheet (pdf) – E1 multi-stream recorder/replayer

PC-HSR Data Sheet (pdf) – LVDS serial high-speed recorder/replayer

R2D3 E1/PRI Record/Replay Software Data Sheet (pdf)

Manuals

DRSS-MAN-R119 E1SS-1080 Splitter

E1DT-MAN-P112 E1DT Splitter

E1UC-MAN-0401 E1UC Hardware

E1UC-MAN-0402 E1UC Software

ECLV-MAN-R119 ECL to LVDS Converter

PCHS-MAN-S201 PC-HSR Software

QAOS-MAN-R101V2 Active Optical Splitter

R2D3-MAN-PR01 PCI LVDS Card Programmer’s Reference

R2D3-MAN-E102 R2D3 PCI Card

Software

R2D3 PCI Card

Linux E1 and LVDS source – R2D3 full source code for Linux driver

Sample Code Visual C++ R2D3-ASSY-14xx V1

E1 Reader Installer  - Reader for R2D3 E1 files

E1 Replayer Installer – R2D3 replayer software (needs hardware dongle for full functionality)

E1-PRI Capacity Calculator – quick calculator for volume space requirements

R2D3 Driver – includes WinRT tm drivers

Sample E1 File – ANSI ISUP – sample R2D file containing ANSI ISUP signalling

E1UC

3105_E1UC_Controller – full Controller installer,( requires hardware dongle for full functionality)

Version Check

Current versions of software/firmware are available by contacting Somerdata Support,  support@somerdata.com.

R2D4

Firmware

R2D4-Assy-0120 : V0R11
R2D4-Assy-0130: V1R2
R2D4-Assy-0132 : V1R3
R2D4-Assy-0133 : V1R1
R2D4-Assy-0140 – V1R2

Software Driver

R2D4 : 5000.1.6

E1UC

Firmware

E1UC Assy-0401: V0R9

Software

API DLL :3103.0.8
Controller : 3105.1.0.0

E1SS

Software

Controller: 3000.1.0.0
IP Configurator : 3002.1.0.0
Flash Loader:3100.0.2.0
Groom Controller: 3101.0.0

R2D3 ( Supported but not developed)

Software

E1Reader : 1000.1.8
E1 Replayer: 1100.2.0.1
E1 Recorder : 1200.2.0.2
E1 IF Recorder : 1250.1.9
E1 SF Recorder: 1280.3.0.1
E1 Loop Recorder: 1285.1.2.0
RS-422A Recorder/Replayer: 1300.1.3
LVDS Recorder/Replayer:1350.1.3
E1 Timeslot Viewer: 1910.1.4.3
E1 Pipe Server:1922.1.0
E1 Signalling Analyser:1930.2.1.1

Rechargeables

SSAS-A31 Data sheet

SSAS-A9 Data sheet

SSAS-A31 Data sheet

SSAS-A10 LCD Data Sheet

Primary Cell

SSAS-B8 Data sheet

SSAS-B21 Data Sheet

SSAS-U49 Data sheet

Specialist

SSAS Audio Modules Data sheet

Manuals

SSAS-MAN-D107 A10, B8 Recorders

SSAS-MAN-D111 Recorder Manager Software

SSAS-MAN-D120 B22 Recorder

SSAS-MAN-D126 B21 Recorder

SSAS-MAN-D128 S1 Recording Module

SSAS-MAN-D129 S3 Recording Module

SSAS-MAN-D310 A31 Recorder

SSAS-MAN-D490 U49 Recorder

SSAS-MAN-D901 A9 Recorder

Voice recording from U49 Recorder

Faced with an endless and sometimes confusing range of covert audio recorders and intercept devices, how do you choose?

At Somerdata, we have selected for you the pick of the best around, and where we don’t carry them ourselves, we will recommend the best solution for you.

Unlike Video recording, audio can be quite difficult to understand and there are still a plethora of formats, rates, technologies and so on to choose from.

So, first try and define what you want to achieve, then compromise to what you can get ( and afford!).

Here are some questions to pose, only you can supply the answers.

1. Is my target benign or hostile? How will they react to discovery of their being recorded? Do I need to tell them beforehand? ( you might need to do some research on lawful intercept and fair usage in the territory in which you operate.)

2. Is my target stationary or mobile? Do they visit one location or many?

3. How close can I get?

4. Can I get to the target site(s) safely before  and /or after the surveillance period?

5. How long is the surveillance period? Is surveillance unattended? Does it need immediate reaction to events?

6. Do my recordings need to be presented as reviewable evidence, especially in a court of law.?

7. Does my device need to be self-powered? How physically robust does it need to be? Are there size and packaging constraints?

8. Does the device need to be protected from counter-measures and interception? what happens if recordings fall into the wrong hands or transmissions are intercepted by a third party?

9. How much is my data worth? How much am I prepared to spend to collect it?

If you’ve answered ALL of those questions then you probably already know enough to make your own selection and you don’t need any more advice. Carry on!

For everyone else,  let’s look at the options, technologies and practical solutions.

Firstly, if you carry a mobile phone, then you already have a mobile audio recorder. Put it on the desk, point it at your target and press record. The quality will be ok and you’ll get something. Now here’s the weird thing. When you come to play it back, you’ll suddenly notice all sorts of strange noises you didn’t hear when you made the recording. Rustling paper, room echo, road noise, and a hundred other liltte noises, some quite distracting. With luck you may even have recorded something useful. Why is this?

Well, the human auditory system is a remarkable instrument. It can filter out extraneous noise, correlate muti-path echoes, focus on point sources and acts as a very sophisticated filtering system especially when coupled with eyesight. Human ears have a very wide dynamic range (>120dB) meaning we can hear whispers and jet engines with equal clarity, but we also non-linearly favour speech frequencies – we hear in the range 300 to 6 kHz more distinctly than in frequencies outside this range. And this also varies with age.

Crucially though, we hear in Stereo using two ears. This not only gives us twice the sensitivity but we are able to give spatial resolution to what we hear – where it is, how fast it’s moving, separation of multiple sources into distinct focal points.

So technically, the mobile phone is going to struggle a bit to compete. It’s  probably mono, limited dynamic range, limited frequency range and doesn’t match the human ear response.

Which leads us to the grown-ups – dedicated recorders and transmission systems designed specifically to work in this environment.

First Recorders.

Dedicated audio recorders for use in covert and /or surveillance operations generally  need to be physically small, robust, high quality and easy to operate. In addition, they may need to have long recording time, be secure if mislaid, and invisible to counter-measures.  Some if not all of these are contradictory and require practical compromises.

Lets look at some of these.

Quality – by which we mean intelligibility and repeatability.

We need to be able to understand the recording and probably listen to it many times without degradation. Repeatability comes from digitising the audio, then using a high-quality medium to store the resultant digits. Nowadays this means solid-state (semiconductor) . Not infallible, but better than mechanical systems like tape, disk or cd/dvd which are easliy damaged.

Intelligibilty comes about through a combination of dynamic range ( the ratio of the loudest sound to the quietest) and frequency range ( bass to treble).

Digitisation involves cutting your nice analogue signal into thousands of bits that take up a lot more space and take longer to transmit than the original, so the concept of compression was introduced to compenaste.  This is not the place to debate compression algorthms, suffice it to say that compression, especially non-reversible, is generally bad for intelligibility. Digitisation also creates its own limits. As a rule of thumb,  you need to digitise at twice the highest frequency you want to record at – as a practical  example, 8kHz of voice bandwidth needs to be digitised at 16KHz. ( For comparison, audio CD quality  digitises at about 44kHz to get a HiFi acceptable bandwidth of 20kHz).  Note though that the number of bits created also doubles, so does the storage capacity and the transmission rate.  In general you need the highest sampling rate you can afford ( although there is no point in outsripping the capability of you microphone). And from an intelligence gathering point of view, you may want to include a wider bandwidth than is strictly necessary for voice, to improve spatial information or pick up extraneous sound information that gives context to the operation.

16-bit one-button Audio recorder

The other determinant of quality is the number of bits per sample, the quantization level. 8, 10, 12,14 and 16 bits are common. The practical effect of quantization is to largely determine the noise floor, or put another way, the overall signal-to-noise ratio and thus the dynamic range. The more bits per sample  used, the lower the noise floor and the wider the dynamic range; so 10 is good, 16 is better. Translated to analogue quantities, 10 bits is about 60dB ,  16 bits can represent about 96dB of Signal to Noise ratio. Of course this is not the only determinant of system noise -  power supplies, microphone and pre-amplifier semiconductor noise may combine to dominate. And as usual there is a price to pay for more bits, in power consumption, download/transmission time  and storage space required

Discrete – or in other words very small and unobtrusive, preferably invisible. Packing a lot of data into a very small space is a challenge for both microelectronics and power supplies. In fact, portable device size is  almost always determined by the battery size which in turn is determined by the power consumption and operating time of the electronics -which in turn is determined by sampling rate and storage technology…… etc.!

Invisible is still a bit tricky but consider hiding in plain view – a pen, a key fob, a usb stick or a bluetooth earpiece are all available and ignored by most people.

Covert stereo recorder!

Secure – faced with the inevitability of losing your recorder at some point, what about its content? Would you want that falling into the wrong hands ? (ie not yours).  Securing the contents of the recorder is vital, so consider using a record-only device. This may sound strange but what it really means is being able to retrieve the data only under controlled conditions. A password protected recorder/replayer is a good start but most passwords can be cracked quite readily. They are created by people, who like to be able to remember them, so passwords tend to submit to computerised brute force attack quite readily.

Encrypting the stored data is another help, now you need a password ( you did set one didn’t you….!)  and a key. But encryption also takes up storage space, consumes power and is not readily available on simple devices.  Storing the data in an unfamiliar format, proprietary or obscure is another method. users now need access to a format converter which may be unpublished or simply unavailable. This is almost as effective as encryption and effectively limits access at no overhead cost to the device.

U49 in a hedge

Alternatives to Recorders

The obvious alternative to recorders is direct transmission and the uninitiated often say, “all i need is a microphone with a transmitter and i can use wireless – i don’t need a recorder near my target”. Let’s examine that in the same technical way as we did above.

Wireless transmitters suffer many of the same constraints as recorders with a few added. Firstly, a microphone or audio gathering system still needs to be in the right place. It needs a power supply, a transmitter and an antenna. If it needs to be externally controlled it needs a receiver as well.  Wireless transmissions are subject to strict regulation – you can’t just use any part of the wireless spectrum for your transceiver. In fact there are very few parts of the spectrum available to non-broadcast or military devices and they come in distinct bands, for ecample 900MHz, 1.8GHz, 2.5Ghz, 433MHz, 27Mhz and so on. Why is this important? Firstly, these bands are already heavily used -cellular phone networks, bluetooth, zigbee, low power radio, radio controlled models and so on. Secondly and more importantly, their transmissibility varies with frequency or wavelength if you prefer. Short wavelengths ( higher frequencies) travel in straighter paths, the so-called line of sight problem. Short wavelenght radio  doesn’t travel round corners. So shaped antennae are required that ‘point’ signals in the desired direction. Perversely, for this argment, the more useful longer wavelengths that can travel further and  bend a bit, need physically larger antennae. In the case of the longer wavelengths, a quarter wave antenna can be half a metre long. Go lower in frequency and we start to talk several metres (or several equivalent metres) with folded arrays and reflectors etc. These can hardly be described as discrete.

So surveillance trnasmitters of this type tend to concentrate on the shorter wavelengths. For example Bluetooth operates in the 2.5GHz region. Consequently the range is limited and if someone happens to park a bus or a truck in front your transmitter, or it rains heavily, or there are a lot of other bluetooth devices around then the range may be zero as far as you are concerned!.

The effects of this can be overcome a little by boosting the power of the transmitter, bt leaving aside the increased power supply or batter needed to do this, this leads to the next problem -detection and counter-measures.

Clearly, a wireless transmitter by design is capable of being found by a receiver. If it can be found by your receiver then it can be found by someone else’s. Or more likely by a sweeping spectrum analyser designed to find it.  Strategies to overcome this include spread-spectrum, chirp or burst transmission and sweep detector detection. These add to the complexity, cost and detract from the reliability.

So what about a hybrid? Why not record the data, then download it wirelessly so you don’t have to retrieve it.?

In two words -see above. The problem does not go away or get better. The wireless link now has to be remotely activated, so a transmitter and receiver is required. And an antenna. And a power supply. And a recorder. And let’s think about the data transmission characteristics.

Suppose a recorder has been running for a couple of days at a good quality. It may have accumulated 3-400MBytes of data. This now has to be downloaded. Assume the link is capable of good quality bluetooth  rates, say 100kbps to make the sums easy. The time to download this data assuming uninterrupted and error-free, is 400*8*1000 kb (kilobits) /100 (kilobits per sec) = 32000 seconds or about 9 hours!

Now clearly we can hope for better than this – low power data rates are gradually climbing but even at 1Mbps this is still approximately 1 hour. Higher data rates approaching WiFi rates are available but only at significant power cost. And of course the transmitter can still be detected, and any simple electromagnetic shielding around the target will nullify the transmistter. (Chicken wire works well).

The conclusion to this is that there is no simple answer. Each situation may require a different solution and you need a toolbox of them to deliver results.

Hopefully at Somerdata we can provide you with some of these tools, advice and even the names of Companies  who provide the solutions we don’t. !

SSAS-D-2048

Optimised for easy recording and aimed at situations where legal evidence needs to be presented, the SSAS-D series of recorders provides a compact, easy to use and economical solution to evidential audio recording.

The extremely high sensitivity of the microphone coupled with wide dynamic range ( low-noise) 16-bit A to D and a 10kHz Frequency range make this an unassailable performer.

Markers in the data are used to indicate that the recording has not been modified, and the only actions allowed are Record or Delete, preventing uploading of altered recordings.

The unit is housed in a sturdy metallic case and powered by AAA battery types.  This high-quality recorder comes in 3 recording capacity formats, 14, 28 and 56 hour recording. Standard AAA batteries give a 40 hour contiuous recording life, and 9 months standby. High capacity batteries give a 60 hour continuous recording life.

Spec highlights

• Dimensions:  Height 85 mm, Width 13 mm, Thickness 13 mm
• Weight 14 g
• Case Metal
• Record time 14h, 28h, 56h
• Battery life in record mode 40h
• Power supply Rechargeable battery or battery
• Battery life in stand-by mode 9 months
• Built-in flash memory 2 Gb, 4 Gb, 8 Gb
• Interface USB 1.1
• Audio recording format Mono
• Frequency band 100 — 10000 Hz
• Dynamic range – 80 dB
• Sample rate 20 kHz
• Timer recording YES

Data Diodes perform an essential function by preventing data falling into the wrong hands.

However a Data Diode is yet another element in the already complex network, so what is the effect on performance and how can it be verified?

First a recap of the Data Diode principles.

We divide the network into ‘low’ and ‘high’ , representing an insecure network and a high-security network. The only connection between the two is the Data Diode.

There is no return path across a network Data Diode so the low side cannot know that data has been successfully received by the high side. One strategy to overcome this is to send the data multiple times, so called redundant transmission. Obviously the aggregate data rate across the diode is limited by this, if the data is transmitted twice, the maximum data rate that can be achieved is half the maximum flow rate and so on. In low-traffic networks this can be tolerated but in high-traffic networks, it is essential that this maximum flow-rate be as high as possible, preferably effectively transparent to the rest of the network by being as fast as possible.

In the case of the AROW Data Diode, this is Gigabit Ethernet speeds. AROW is an entirely hardware based product so GBE connections are very fast, and the internal flow rate of AROW is over twice the maximum GBE rate. Coupled with a large, fast hardware buffer AROW provides an exceptionally quick route between low and high networks.

To illustrate this, we use AROW’s supplied Python-scripted file management tool. This provides a layer of file management that includes sectioning files to be transmitted, calculating and applying CRC and header management information to the files and includes statistical real-time measurement of performance parameters such as flow rate, time taken for transfer and so on.

In this example, two files are transmitted, one quite small (35kB), one large (460MB). The script is set to transmit files twice with a 100 second interval between transmissions. In practical terms, this means that the high-side copy of the file is never more than 100 seconds behind the low-side file if it is changed, ie the latency is 100 seconds.

The screenshot shows a real data transfer taking place from a Linux Server to the Data Diode. The first line shows the name of the file being sent. This is the very small one, so takes an almost immeasurable amount of time. the effect of the buffer can be seen here, with the burst data rate being over 1.6Gbps. A more realistic rate is shown by the second file transmission. This 450MB file ( actually 461,750,272 Bytes) took 3.884 seconds to cross the diode giving a very respectable data flow rate of 952,259Kbps, almost 1Gbps!

AROW Data Transfer

Later on, and with a little more network traffic from other applications, the files are re-transmitted, the larger taking 3.879 seconds or a 953,380 kbps flow rate.

The screenshot also illustrate the sequence of events that takes place during a data transfer
a) Backup recovery file – a special file is created that can be used to perform post transmission recovery in the event of a network breakdown that causes files to be lost during transmission
b) the entire transmission tree is scanned to determine what files are present and their status.
c) Deleted files are processed – you can choose to tell the high side that some file previously in the tree have been deleted, their counterparts on the high side will also be deleted to maintain perfect synchronism between the low and high side file trees.bftp.py
d) the tree is checked for new files – ie files that have been added to the low-side tree structure for transmission to the high side
e) the tree is checked for modifications to a file already in the low-side tree, for example, emails added to a .pst file or updated operating system files added to a repository
f) there is no point in re-transmitting identical files that haven’t changed….
g) finally some management information is created and the files selected for transmission are sent. The whole process is repeated at the interval parameter entered on application start.

Bandwidth Hogging.

Of course there will be situations where System Administrators will want to prevent one network route taking all the available bandwidth to the exclusion of other traffic, so the application also includes a user-settable rate control, simply added to the command line parameter

In a typical highly networked complex industrial process (see diagram) there are many potential access points for data retrieval, management and control.

Plant operators need detailed control of the operating process, plant supervisors need monitoring and override control, office and procedural need ordering and despatch information, Engineering need detailed analysis and process prototyping, Corporate Management need strategic and financial information and  so on.

Complex networks are typically put in place to allow all these entities to communicate with each other and systems of pass control, often using passwords and islanded networks are used to ensure that only those with the right access level are granted rights to change or monitor particular areas of activity.

But what about the rogue environment? Networks are prone to cyber attack, disaffected employees can bypass or disable firewall and password protection, and there is the simple operator error mistake.

It is usually the case that more clients need status, (what the process is doing, what the schedule is, what the latest management information is), than need control or to alter information. This allows for the use of a one way data network component, a data diode, that provides a physical barrier to network traffic.

The data diode has the characteristic that data can flow only one way from one network to another. There is simply no physical return path to allow data to flow from the receiving network.

In a process control environment protected in this way, this means that there is no way that for example, someone using the office network can change the process network , yet they can still monitor it. This scenario obviously extends to cyber attacks. Even if the office network is compromised by a Trojan program, no changes can be made to the secured process. And of course this can also be extended further, allowing for example lower security networks to send data to the higher security network such as corporate head quarters or financial systems and no data can be sent back to the lower-level networks, preventing the theft or misappropriation of secure data.

Somerdata’s AROW Optical Wormhole Data Diode is an embodiment of this principle that simply sits between networks. It incorporates fast Gigabit Ethernet connectivity using TCP/IP protocols to sit seamlessly into an existing network. The diode is dual redundant with automatic failover protection providing maximum data integrity in the event of physical or routing failure and separate network monitoring ports for maximum performance and network integrity.

Developed for maximum security networks, AROW has been designed to the most stringent standards to ensure data flow can only be one way.

Operating system independence is provided by open source scripting control software so that network administrators and network quality assurance auditors can be 100% sure of data that is being transmitted.

The diagram above relies on software and levelled access control with all of the administration needed to constantly update and revise who has access to what.

So let’s island the networks and connect AROW data diodes to see how this admin burden can be reduced and security improved.

The majority of information required is to monitor different aspects of the process, from billing and purchasing to quality and performance measurement. Additionally the normal administrative tasks of meeting personnel, email and internet communications need to be maintained.

If we insert 3 diodes into this group of networks, we can see that all of those functions can still be achieved, but only the Industrial network can actually change or control the process.

If we insert two more diodes, we can also prevent Corporate and external level data being accessed by the lower levels while still allowing Corporate to access information it needs.

There is now no necessity for administrative network configuration to prevent user control access – simply, the levels outside of the diodes cannot gain control of the protected networks. Only information that the protected network wishes to share is available to the other networks.

Somerdata High Reliability Data Diodes provide a non-intrusive, low-maintenance additional security option to protect your valuable process from accidental and malicious misuse.

• E1 single – E1DT
• E1  multi-stream E1SS

•   Optical - STM-1/4  Splitter

PC Cards

• STM1/STM 4 – PCI Express  - R2D4
• E1 – PCI - R2D3
• RS422/LVDS Serial- PCI  R2D3

Converters and Switches

• E1 over USB – E1UC
• E1 to Gigabit Ethernet – CARP Data Server
• Gigabit Ethernet to E1 – CARP Streamer

Recorder/Replayers

• 1Mbps to 60Mbps Record/Replay – PC-HSR
• E1 Record/Replay – PC-VDR

Communications Product Map Communications Product Diagram

AROW Optical Wormhole Data Diode

Somerdata’s AROW Optical Wormhole Data Diode  is available for all commercial customers as well as at the top level of security classification.

AROW is available in 3 options, as an entry level single channel, an enterprise  level dual channel version and a high security level fully-redundant version.

All versions feature single direction isolating GBE performance, Copper and Fiber TCP/IP  connectivity, included o/s independent software and high quality construction.

AROW is a data diode  used to secure networks from data theft,  to allow only authorised status access to secured process control networks and allow high security networks to access low-security data and is effective against trojans such as stuxnet since there is no physical path for data to leave the network. Designed to EAL7+ standards, this data diode meets the most stringent of security requirements.

AROW can be used in conjunction with software filters or as stand-alone and integrates seamlessly into existing GBE networks.

AROW can be used as a direct connection for existing TCP streams, or with the supplied AROWBftp scripted software. This open source Python code allows the automatic management of file transfers, tcp stream data, web-site transmission etc and can be easily audited, extended or customised to your specific needs, either by us or your own software developers or  system adminsitrators.

Contact us for Manuals, demo software etc.

AROW Data Sheet

AROW-MAN-0602

AROW Powerpoint slideshow

Somerdata is pleased to announce its new Cybersecurity product, AROW optical wormhole.

AROW provides one-way data communication across networks preventing data leakage and theft.

More to follow

AROW Data Sheet