After showing my wireless alarm reverse engineering work to a few installers, ARC operators and manufacturers, it became clear that many were interested in looking at signalling devices rather than alarms themselves.
A signalling device is the piece of equipment that communicates with an Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) to signal status such as “I’m all good” or “I’m in alarm”. They are essential on any serious alarm system and are used on everything from high-end domestic installs to banks and security deposit centres.
It’s clear that a security hole in a signalling device could have huge repercusions.
There are many signalling devices available – BT Redcare, WebWayOne, CSL Dualcom to name a few. CSL Dualcom has a large portion of the market, and I happened across a pile of 15 used Dualcom GPRS units. This makes them a good place to start.
This series is going to be a bit different to others. I’ve always finished or mostly finished by research before publishing before. This time, I’m going to publish work as I do it. It might be more rambling and verbose, but hopefully it will give people a better idea of the amount and range of work involved.
What is a CSL Dualcom GPRS?
From promotional material:
DualCom GPRS G2, from CSL DualCom Limited, is an intruder alarm signalling device that uses both the Vodafone network and your telephone path to transmit intruder and personal attack signals at high speed. Once the alarm is confirmed as genuine, police are notified. Utlising two signalling paths ensures that DualCom dual-signalling will always have a back-up path in the event of an accidental or deliberate fault on either path.
Essentially, it’s a small box which receives signals from the alarm system, and communicates with the ARC over both a GPRS (mobile phone data) connection and either a telephone line or IP connection.
I’m not seeing phrases like “encryption” and “military grade”. This is a good thing really.
I’ve really not had much experience with GPRS so this should be interesting.
What’s in a Dualcom GPRS?
It’s a small, plastic box partially enclosing a PCB. There are screw terminals, two buttons, two 7-segment LED displays, and a socketed 8-pin EEPROM.
I haven’t seen a UI so simple for a very long time.
“NVM” means Non Volatile Memory i.e an EEPROM. These are still quite common on security equipment. You pull the EEPROM, program it in an external device, put it back in.
There’s also terminals on the side for connecting to the PSTN (telephone line), and a SIM card socket. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Let’s pop the cover off:
Some more detail:
- The main processor is an NEC 78K0R/KF3, specifically a μPD78F1154. This is a 16bit processor with 128KB of flash, 8KB of RAM, ADCs, DACs, a load of IO, 4 UARTS, timers etc.
- In addition to the socketed EEPROM , there is an additional SMD EEPROM.
- A fairly large section of the board is for the PSTN modem.
- The GPRS modem is a Wavecom GR64 module, which is connected via a 60pin interface.
What to look at next?
Next we need to see what information is available on the Internet about this device.
Russ
March 28, 2014 at 10:29pmJust wanted you to know I was reading and follow the site. Keep up the interesting work and great projects.