[Dxspider-support] Testing Confirms ROS Auto-Spotting to Spider Nodes

[VK3AMA]

Yesterday I ran some tests and can confirm that ROS software (Betas 
4.5.7, 4.5.8, 4.6.0 & 4.6.2) is auto-spotting to the cluster without any 
control from the op.

ROS has hard-coded the following Clusters and connects to one of these 
if possible.

dxc.us6iq.com
dxc.ham.hr
9a0dxc.hamradio.hr
remo3.renet.ru
cluster.sk4bw.net
ax25.org
sk3w.se
sector7.nu
sm7gvf.dyndns.org

I setup my internet router to re-route these addresses (and ports) to a 
Cluster Node I have setup locally for testing to avoid spotting to the 
live Cluster.

Then left the ROS software in RX mode (no TX) monitoring 20M. Over 20 
spots were generated over a 2 hour period. Different comment strings 
were sent in the spots.

A closer inspection of the internal code of ROS reveals randomising code 
(select a random string) and the following hard-coded Cluster spotting 
strings.

"tnx ros mode"
"73 ROS Mode"
"tnx fer ROS QSO"
"ROS 599"
"ROS 559"
"CQ ROS"
"CQ ROS Mode"
"CQ ROS."
"ROS"
"ros"
"599 ROS Mode"
"73, ros mode"
"ROS, 73"
"tu ROS Mode"
"ROS test"
"copy ROS Mode -<SN> dB"
"ROS QSO <NAME>"
"ros mode <QTH>"
"ROS Mode <QTH>"
"599 ROS -<SN> dB"
"ROS -<SN> dB at <QTH>"
"ROS CQ -<SN> dB"
"ROS. TNX QSO. 73 <NAME>"

<NAME>, <QTH> are substitued with the configured settings and <SN> the 
received S/N ratio.

Clearly the use of several variations of text, mixing upper- & 
lower-case letters, 599 & 559 reports is all designed to make anyone 
viewing the Cluster think that these ROS spots are Human generated and 
not auto-spot spam.

The ROS developer has NOT documented, in ether the User Guide or FAQ, 
this auto-spot advertising facility of his software.

My observations.

de Laurie, VK3AMA