Comments on: Rogue server in a UPS

By: Geminus

Geminus — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 16:19:47 +0000

This was done some years ago at DEFCON as well if I am not mistaken?

By: tony james

tony james — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 07:07:26 +0000

Dan
In reference to the remark,

By: Wim L

Wim L — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:33:38 +0000

I don’t think this would keep your server from being taken by thieves. The one time I had my apt burgled they took everything that looked remotely electronic (stereo, old NeXT cube, soldering iron…) and if I’d had a UPS I’m sure they’d have taken that too.

By: autonin

autonin — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 22:12:31 +0000

I did this at DEFCON and ToorCon back in 2003: “UPS: Who can Brown Own For You Today?” The UPS batteries didnt work anymore, but how many UPS’ don’t work after a few years anyway?

My system was plug-and-play – auto network discovery, auto phone-home, PSK DES encrypted exfiltration over a stealth channel (DNS). Came with a nice suite of attack tools – Dsniff, THCRUT, some MS exploits of the day, and even Nessus. It was all remote-controllable, even through a NAT device.

This would _not_ work as a ‘Hide Data from the Feds’ box – they take everything, they open everything. The way to hide data from the Feds is to not be anywhere near it – remote location, plausible deniability.

I fully expected my box to be discovered eventually, and had it reporting to a non-tracible listening post server.

Anyway, nice work, if not entirely original… :)

-Auto

By: Dean

Dean — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:01:33 +0000

One could use this idea to swap out a existing ups at a company and have a server sitting descretely between the incomming line and the network, (on the other side of the firewall), and you could sniff all traffic in and out of the network..

By: Eliot Phillips

Eliot Phillips — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:50:53 +0000

Projects on inventgeek are very popular and usually show up on Digg, Make, Slashdot, BoingBoing, and Engadget (remember the vibrating lockpick last week) Usually I don’t get to carry these stories because they’re old news by the time the story would go up as the hack the following day. Jared (the inventgeek site owner) knows this and sent me the link in hopes that I could get to it before everyone else. That’s why the post went up at 12:01AM, To be the Hack of the Day.

Of course there is a possibility that Digg got it first since iventgeek is a web site on the internet. I searched for it and found these three stories:

http://digg.com/mods/PROJECT_ROUGE_SERVER
http://digg.com/mods/Server_in_a_Dead_UPS
http://digg.com/mods/Rogue_server_in_a_UPS

All apparently duping a Digg link that doesn’t exist anymore. Someone probably reported the original as the dupe and it got deleted. What a wonderfully broken system: Slashdot has met its match.

By: aaron

aaron — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:36:04 +0000

Here’s another project from a couple years ago that was presented at toorcon with a similar concept. Looks like there’s some software that he could probably use as well, =).
http://www.tvsg.org/geeklog/staticpages/index.php?page=20030915100424692
http://www.tvsg.org/ups/

By: steve

steve — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:15:27 +0000

blind, im not so sure about that. digg has (rather often) had hackaday features posted. correct me if im wrong eliot, but i’m guessing that it was posted here first and then digg picked it up. the timing is about right.

By: blind

blind — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:07:58 +0000

that’s the second story from digg i’ve seen posted on here. yikes.

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 05:18:06 +0000

This concept could keep you vital data safe if your house is ever robbed. No one would ever steal a UPS :)

By: cooldude

cooldude — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 05:12:55 +0000

Thats pretty cool, but i have my 2TB server hidden in my wall…..just in case the feds come :)

By: captsnuffy

captsnuffy — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 00:07:55 +0000

Proabably because it made it easier having the data and power over USB with the enclosure than hacking up another way. He probably could’ve removed the casing but it ended up fitting and laziness was able to kick in.

By: paul h

paul h — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:26:40 +0000

I didn’t see in the explanation why he chose to leave the case around the hard drive- especially after sawing the wrapper off of the wall wart. Maybe just because he didn’t need to save any more space?

By: grayskies

grayskies — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:11:00 +0000

very nice job on that. I’m impressed at the quality.

By: Sebsz

Sebsz — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:40:24 +0000

I wonder if this guy stole the ideas from my mind. Well I’m not hiding a computer inside a broken UPS. I am hiding a light controller that is connected to my computer by PC… I will be submitting this with photos to hackaday.com so keep checking. It will allow you all to switch on and off up to about 32 110v/220v LIGHTS and low-power appliances using your computer! (Think: Light shows, lights synced to music, etc.).

Too bad he was there first with the “Hide it inside your UPS” idea.

SeBsZ