EyezOn Forum

Can anyone describe if and how EnvisAlarm protects against "crash and smash" attacks? This is where the intruder makes his way to the alarm panel and destroys it before the outgoing alarm can be transmitted.

Mike

EnvisAlarms are transmitted within 50 milliseconds of an alarm on the panel.

Assuming the thief breached an instantaneous zone, the worst case communication time (assuming all primary communicators fail) is one second.

How fast is this hypothetical crash and smash thief?

Thanks for the quick reply and forgive me if I don't use the right terminology as I am new to the field. So what I have read is that typically there will be a delay between when a zoned sensor state changes and when a "alarm" gets sent to the monitoring center. Some of this delay is intentional to give time for you to turn off your alarm when you come home. So maybe this is relevant to your "instantaneous zone" reference.

Suppose the breach occurs at the garage/mud room door, which is set to be a "non instantaneous" zone, i.e. intentional delay of D seconds from time door is opened to when the code has to be entered to disarm the system. I am considering a DSC PC1864 + Envisalink 2DS + EnvisAlarm so here are my questions:

1.) Between the point at which the zone sensor state changes, call it t0, and D seconds later, what information gets sent to EnvisAlarm? (i.e. during to < t < t0+D)

2.) After D seconds (i.e. during t > t0+D), what information gets sent to EnvisAlarm?

3.) If the intruder yanks the Ethernet cable out of the 2DS during this intentional delay period (i.e. during t0 < t < t0+D) how does EnvisAlarm respond?

Obviously, human intruders can't get to my panel in 50msec so maybe I have an incorrect understanding of how an intentional delay time works. Looking for some clarification. Thanks!

Mike

These are good questions and are common to all buglary alarm systems.

An "alarm" is only transmitted when there is an "alarm" on the system. If you open an entry/exit zone then the normal entry delay will have to expire before an alarm is transmitted to the monitoring centre. This is how all burglary systems work.

EnvisAlerts offers a little more information in your case as we can transmit data on zone change. So if you really wanted instantaneous notification of an entry/exit zone breach then you can program your Envisalink to do this. This is not available as an EnvisAlarm due to national false-alarm reduction requirements.

With respect to your scenario, if an intruder gained access to your premise and managed to find your phone line/ethernet/cable and cut it during the entry delay, then no alarm could be transmitted.

In the case of EnvisAlerts, you would be notified within 5 - 10 minutes that your connection has fallen into supervisory alarm (failed to check-in). Eyez-On offers this feature at no-charge to Envisalink customers.

I hope this helps

Michael

I see. Looks like alarm.com really is the only service that offer this protection. They say they get a sensor state change immediately upon breach of a delayed armed zone, but if a disarm code is not received in a certain amount of time, they considers this a potential "crash and bash" scenario and make the normal alarm system triggered phone call sequence.

Apparently this is a patented concept although I imagine it would not be technically difficult for you guys to implement. I was wondering if you guys had found a way to offer an equivalent service but with a different implementation so that no patents would be infringed.

I imagine I could work with the API to send text message out whenever an armed zone experiences a breach, and then another one when the system is successfully disarmed. Then i would know when a potential crash and smash (C&S) scenario might have occurred. i say might because there is no way to distinguish between the ethernet cable being yanked out during a C&S or a coincidental ISP connection going down.

I really like your system but saw this one C&S vulnerability and wanted to get clarification so I could properly weigh the pros and cons of th various services.

So I thought about this some more and I think if I protect the room that the panel is in with a PIR zone configured for instantaneous alarm, then I get my crash and smash protection.

So here is how it might play out:The entry zone with delay is breached, during the delay the intruder runs to the room with the panel, but since it is an instantaneous alarm zone, an alarm is sent to EnvisAlarm in the worst case 1sec response time before the "smash" can occur. Looks like no vulnerability after all!

But I am curious about the "national false-alarm reduction requirements" you hinted at. Do these requirements apply to instantaneous zones or just delay entry/exit zones?

Also what exactly do the requirements limit? Would they somehow prevent the crash and smash solution I outlined above?

Mike

False alarm prevention is included in all CP-01 panels, like the DSC panels we support. You can view the overview at the SIA website.

www.siaonline.org/WorkArea/downloadasset.aspx?id=2146

Thanks. I went to the SIA website and it turns out you have to pay $60 to get a copy of the CP-01 specification. I was able to look at the installation manual for the DSC1864 and it had quite a bit of information on which settings were SIA/CP-01 related and what their default values/ranges were. It looks like there is a minimum entry/exit zone delay as you mentioned. There is also a communication delay that can be added on top of the exit/entry zone delay and also added to instantaneous zones.

I believe the manual says this communication delay can be set to zero (through your installer) so I think I still get my crash and bash protection if I set the PIR zone for my panel to be instantaneous (i.e. perimeter zone).

Is my understanding correct?

Mike

The SIA CP-01 Control Panel - Features for False Alarm Reduction Standard can be viewed here http://forum.eyez-on.com/FORUM/posting. ... 0fa591dd7d.

You are correct in that if you were to install an instant PIR zone at the panel/room - you'd have instant notification. You could even go a step further and make that zone a 24-hour holdup zone...if you want even faster response...although it's technically wrong to program it that way, but you could if you wished to. The other option is to advise the central monitoring station that this particular zone should be setup as an emergency response zone. So there are indeed a few ways to achieve what you want to.