Crypto Voice Transceiver On A Raspberry Pi

Download it from Github. Link sent over by Kris @ Combat Studies Group.- NCS

Crypto Voice Transceiver On A Raspberry Pi

This document provides an overview of the Crypto Voice Transceiver project as well as a brief theory of operations and instructions for how to build one using the provided software builds

What Is It?

The Crypto Voice Transceiver is a system for implementing Secure Voice. The system digitizes voice input using a low-bitrate voice encoder (Codec 2) in this case, encrypts the digital voice signal, and transmits it in a way that allows it to be transferred over a standard analog voice radio signal such as a narrowband FM voice radio or analog telephone.

Conceptually the device is similar to military voice encryption terminals like the KY-99 or commercial versions like the Securenet modules from Motorola. On one end of the device the user plugs in a headset, and on the other end the user connects the device to a radio or analog phone. The user then uses the radio or phone as they usually would, except the sound is being digitized and encrypted by the Crypto Voice Transceiver.

How Does It Work?

The analog voice is first digitized then sent to a voice encoder or vocoder. A vocoder is an audio compression system optimized for compressing voice so it is understandable even at extremely low bitrates. A typical song is encoded at somewhere between 128-328 kbits/second, while a typical vocoder is able to produce voice down to 1.2-1.6 kbits/second, with some systems able to work at even lower bit rates.

The Crypto Voice Transceiver uses the open source Codec 2 vocoder running in the 1.6 kbits/second mode. This vocder operates on audio blocks 40 ms in duration and is able to represent that 40 ms block in 52 bits.

Once a 52 bit block of compressed audio is produced, it is encrypted using an AES-256 cipher in a cipher feedback mode. This allows a receiver to self-synchronize with a transmitter if a block is lost. A diagram of encryption is shown below.

Encryption

After a transmission completes and after every minute of silence after, a new randomly generated 128-bit initialization vector is obtained from the random number generator. When this occurs, a beep can be heard from the headset speaker. This initialization vector is fed into a KMAC-256 keyed hash algorithm along with a 1048 bit shared key embedded into the Crypto Voice Transceiver. This generates a new 256-bit AES key for each block. This key along with the initialization vector is fed into the AES cipher and produces a stream key which is then XOR-ed with the 52-bit compressed voice block to obtain a 52-bit ciphertext block. 48 of these 52 bits are then copied into a 128-bit shift register which is used as the initialization vector for encrypting the next block.

Decryption operates the same way, but in reverse. Whenever a new initialization vector is produced there is some loss of data as the receiver resynchronizes, but resynchronization can complete within 4 blocks, or 160 ms.

Decryption

Once the encrypted block is produced, it is transmitted using an audio frequency shift keying modulator. This is a standard means of transmitting digital data at low bit rates over analog mediums intended to transfer voice. This is how the original acoustic coupler modems used to transfer data over phone lines worked. The low data rate required of the vocoder and slow data rate of the frequency shift keying modulator allows the encrypted digital voice signal to be transmitted over a standard narrowband FM radio channel.

How Do You Build One?

At a minimum, you will need the following:

A Brief Note on USB Audio Receivers

Select a product that is convenient for your use case. For example, I selected a product that has a short TRRS audio cable built into it like this:

USB Audio

I selected a product with TRRS (instead of separate speaker/microphone connectors) because both my headset and radio cable used TRRS connectors. If you don’t, find a one that has separate speaker/microphone connectors.

I selected a product with the built-in audio cable because I originally planed to put my completed built in an enclosure, and the built-in cables mean I don’t need to buy extension cables to route the audio jacks out the enclosure.

One thing to be cautious of is some of the devices are rather large, and the USB connectors on the PI are spaced rather close together. Whatever you buy, make sure you can actually plug two of them in at the same time.

Optional Components

More advanced builds may involve additional components to make the design more polished or portable, such as

Note that the system works very well using phone charger battery instead of a power supply. I ran a simple “loopback” test with the device connected to an 8000 mAH battery, and it remained operational for almost 13 hours. The software does not require a lot of power, and this design is well-suited to portable applications.

If you decide to put it in an enclosure, it is recommended that you do not do so until you go through the programming and configuration process.

An Example Build

Build

This section shows an example build that the author made. With some slight modification this build could be put into an enclosure for improved portability.

Build Procedure

  1. Follow the instructions that came with the Pi to install the heatsinks and install the Pi into its case
  2. Insert the SD Extension Cable into the Pi’s SD card slot
  3. Use hot glue or heavy duty double-sided tape to attach the SD Extension Cable to the top of the Pi enclosure. If the ribbon cable is too long, fold the ribbon cable in place using a dab of hot glue
  4. Install the USB Audio devices into the bottom USB ports of the Pi
  5. Use hot glue or heavy duty double-sided tape to attach the Pi to the top of the battery pack. If there are charge indicator lights or power buttons, try not to obstruct them
  6. Plug the Micro USB Cable into the Micro USB Power Switch. Plug the Male side of the Micro USB Power Switch into the Pi’s Power port.
  7. Route the Micro USB Power Switch cable under the USB Audio devices so that they are wedged between the battery pack and the USB Audio device dongles. Hot glue the cable to the battery pack and USB Audio devices to to prevent them from being bent or damaged, taking care that the USB cable is not pushing them above horizontal. Bottom
  8. Use heavy duty double-sided tape or hot glue to attach the power switch to the side of the battery
  9. Hot glue the audio connectors from the USB Audio devices to the sides of the Pi enclosure. As cables will be plugged and unplugged into these connectors, ensure you use plenty of glue to hold the connectors firmly in place
  10. Plug the USB A side of the cable into the highest power outlet of the battery pack
  11. Label the USB Audio Devices once you have gone through the configuration process and know which one is the headset device and which is the radio device

Programming

This programming and key generation process is also shown in this video.

  1. Download the release_raspberrpi.zip release for your model of Raspberry Pi. This is a heavily customized version of the Linux software that normally runs on a Raspberry Pi and will not run anything else but the barebones software necessary to run the crypto_transceiver software. Note: you only need to flash the SD card once. For subsequent firmware updates you only need to use the zImage file
  2. Unzip the release_raspberrypi.zip. You should then have a file named sdcard.img
  3. Follow the instructions on the Raspberry Pi site for flashing an image to the SD card.

Generatng and Saving a Key

On Windows

  1. Download the Crypto Transceiver Config Utility. This will allow you to generate an encryption key and load it onto the SD card or update firmware versions when there are updated versions of firmware
  2. Run the Crypto Transciever Config Utility
  3. Click “New Key” New Key. You should see text in the “Key Hash” textbox. Note this is not the key itself but merely a way you can visually distinguish whether or not two SD cards are programmed with the same key
  4. Click “Save Key to SD” Save Key
  5. In the dialog box that appears, select the SD card you wish to write to. Save Dialog
  6. Click “OK”

On Linux

  1. Open a terminal and cd into the mount point for the SD card
  2. Ensure a directory named config exists on the SD card
  3. Run the following command: dd if=/dev/random of=config/key bs=131 count=1

Loading an Existing Key

You may wish to program an SD card using an existing key. To do so.

On Windows

  1. Run the Crypto Transceiver Config Utility
  2. Click the “Read Key From SD” button.
  3. In the dialog box that appears, select the SD card you wish to read from
  4. Click “OK”. The text in the “Key Hash” textbox should be updated.

This key can now be saved to an SD card as usual. This does not require the original SD card still be plugged into the computer.

On Linux

  1. Plug both SD cards into the computer
  2. Ensure a directory named config exists on the destination SD card
  3. Copy the config/key file from the source SD card into the config directory on the destination SD card

First Time Boot

There still likely will need to be some configuration which needs to be performed on the device the first time it is powered on, such as adjusting microphone and speaker volume settings on both audio devices. To do this, ensure a programmed SD card with key is installed in the Raspberry Pi, both audio devices are plugged into their own USB ports, and that a monitor is connected to the Raspberry Pi through the HDMI connector. A keyboard will also need to be connected, but it is recommended that this be done after the system boots up, as the keyboard may affect the order in which USB devices are initialized during start-up.

Power on the device. After a few seconds, the boot process should complete; and you should hear what sounds like noise coming out of one of the audio devices. This is the side that will be connected to your radio or phone. The other device will be connected to your headset.

A prompt should appear on the screen telling you to select one of the audio devices or “save”. To perform this part of the setup process it is important to have some way of checking voice levels. One way to do this is to connect the radio output to the radio input using a male-male cable. This will verify that the levels on the radio side are adequate to decode the signal as well as provide you with voice feedback you can use to adjust the headset levels.

Once you do this, select each device. A user interface will be displayed on the screen that will allow you to adjust levels of each audio device. Initially the screen displayed is the speaker output. This screen is a bit confusing, because it will show you a volume bar labeled “microphone”. This setting configures the side tone volume. To adjust the microphone volume you will need to press “tab” until you see just one volume bar labeled “microphone”. Side tone needs to be turned off on the radio device: press the “m” key to mute it; you should see “MM” displayed below the volume bar when it is muted. I would also recommend turning off auto-gain on the radio device, also by pressing the “m” key to mute

The left/right arrow keys will allow you to cycle through settings, and the up/down arrow keys will allow you to adjust volume settings. Once you are done, the Escape key will exit out of the UI. Once you have adjusted both interfaces, follow the commands on the screen to save the settings to the SD card. They will be loaded from the SD card whenever the system is powered on.

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About the Author: NC Scout

NC Scout is the nom de guerre of a former Infantry Scout and Sergeant in one of the Army’s best Reconnaissance Units. He has combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a series of courses focusing on small unit skills rarely if ever taught anywhere else in the prepping and survival field, including his RTO Course which focuses on small unit communications. In his free time he is an avid hunter, bushcrafter, writer, long range shooter, prepper, amateur radio operator and Libertarian activist. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via his blog at brushbeater.wordpress.com .

6 Comments

  1. Peter Gunn November 6, 2021 at 13:10

    can you make this article available as a .pdf? tnx

    • NC Scout November 6, 2021 at 13:14

      Did you click the link to access the read me file (no, you did not).

  2. SOG November 6, 2021 at 13:19

    https://amrron.com/communications-resources/dmx40a/

    some more cool radio tech morse decoder module.

    keep up the good work AP

    • NC Scout November 6, 2021 at 13:22

      Just be aware, its 40m only. There’s a lot better options that work on the entire band spectrum and have the same capability. Plus a CW decoder comes standard in FLDigi and that’s free.

  3. […] Crypto Voice Transceiver On A Raspberry Pi […]

  4. Red November 6, 2021 at 18:02

    Great project! Thanks for posting this. I love that it’s open source, instructions are easy to follow and useable with any radio.

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