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RF security and SIGINT

Maintainer review required before this is authoritative. This page is a careful draft that follows the project's established principle — disclose capability, never adjudicate law (D-021) — but the legal framing on this subject is the kind that gets quoted back, and it should carry the maintainer's own review and voice before it is treated as final. It is published as a draft because the section is a 1.0 requirement and existing to be reacted to is more useful than being absent.

Hammunition carries RF-security, SIGINT and RF-research tooling alongside its amateur-radio software. That is the whole reason the project exists: the operator who wants amateur radio and SDR and RF security on one machine has been carrying two laptops. This section is about using that capability responsibly and lawfully, which is entirely your responsibility and not something any software can decide for you.

What this project does, and does not, do

We disclose. We do not adjudicate. Every profile whose lawful use depends on your authorization is consent-gated: installing it requires an affirmative act that --yes cannot supply, and it prints, before installing anything, exactly what the tools can do. hammunition show rf-research is that disclosure. The gate names risk categories — capabilities like unlicensed transmission, interception of protected communications, identifier collection, spectrum disruption — and stops there. It does not tell you whether your specific use is legal. Only you, knowing your jurisdiction, your authorization, and your intent, can answer that, and this project will not pretend to answer it for you.

This is deliberate and consistent: the same discipline governs how the catalog handles everything with a legal dimension. Disclose the capability plainly; point at the law; let the operator decide.

This is orientation, not counsel, and it is not exhaustive. Consult primary sources and, where the stakes warrant, a lawyer. At least two bodies of law commonly intersect for this tooling, and their intersection is not obvious:

  • Radio regulation. In the United States, amateur operation is governed by 47 CFR Part 97; transmission generally requires a licence and is confined to your privileges, and Part 97 has specific rules about, for example, obscuring the meaning of communications and causing interference. Other countries have their own regulators and rules (Ofcom, ISED, ACMA, and so on). Receiving is treated very differently from transmitting, and the line this project's own scoping draws — receive broadly, transmit under tight, consent-gated conditions — mirrors that.
  • Computer-crime and wiretap law. Software that intercepts communications, collects identifiers, or interacts with systems you do not own can implicate statutes far outside radio law — in the US, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Wiretap Act / ECPA, and their state equivalents. "It was transmitted over the air" is not a blanket exemption; the details matter, and they vary by jurisdiction and by what you do with what you capture.

The intersection is where people go wrong: an action that is fine under radio law can still violate computer-crime or privacy law, and vice versa. When in doubt, the safe posture is receive-only, on spectrum and systems you are authorized for, keeping nothing you are not entitled to keep.

Responsible-use posture

The project's own position, which you inherit when you install this tooling:

  • Authorization first. Use these capabilities only where you have the authority to — your own equipment and spectrum, a documented engagement, a CTF or research context with defined scope, licensed operation within your privileges.
  • Least capability for the task. The gates and profiles are structured so you opt into exactly the capability you need, not a blanket "security mode."
  • Nothing hidden. Every system modification is printed before it happens and recorded after. If a tool can transmit, the disclosure says so.
  • Receive is not a free pass. Interception and collection have their own legal weight even without transmitting. Treat captured data as something you may not be entitled to keep.

Where the tooling lives

RF-security and SIGINT tools are in two profiles. rf-research is consent-gated: read the gate before you install, hammunition show rf-research. The gate is the contract — it tells you what you are taking on, and asks you to accept it deliberately. rf-security is not gated, on purpose (D-021): its tools capture and analyse, ship in Debian, Kali or Parrot without ceremony, and a gate on them would teach people to click through the one that matters. Not gated is not the same as without consequence; the pages below say what each tool can do.

  • Kismet — the wireless device detector in rf-security: what it captures and collects, how it installs on each target (its own signed repository where the archive lacks it), keeping its web interface on this machine, and what to check when a data source will not open.