Official Hackaday Forums

Yes, finally, we have a forum. We get regular requests, both in the comments and in our email for a hackaday forum.  We put it in operation a few days ago and started letting people trickle in and it hasn’t completely blown up in our faces. Please join us there and help build our community. Also, notice there is a button for it over on the right column now.

Some items of interest or common answers to common questions:

  • No illegal activities allowed. Yes, we have the word “hack” in our name. That does not mean that we will hack a website for you. (we get that request weekly).
  • Keep it moderately clean. Sure you can cuss, this isn’t a kids site, but no pronography/gore please.
  • No personal threats.
  • There will be google ads. We are trying really hard to balance the business with the fun, so bear with us. So far, they aren’t in the way. We have no plans on going overboard.
  • This will be readable without a login. You must register to post.
  • We’re working out the kinks. Please report any problems to caleb@

That’s it, enjoy and be civil.

Plug And Prey: Malicious USB Devices

This very informative talk given at Shmoocon 2011 has been posted over at IronGeek. Covering all kinds of angles that a person could attack someones computer through the USB port, this should be read by anyone who is security minded at all. No matter which side of the port you tend to be on, this article has great information. They cover some common attack methods such as keyloggers and fake keyboards as well as some common methods of securing your system against them. We’ve actually seen this in the news a bit lately as people have been using the keyboard emulation method in conjunction with android phones to hack into systems.

[thanks Adrian]

The Pirate Box

One of the most fun aspects of a LAN party was exploring the shared files of all the other users on the network. There were people that would show up, solely for the file swapping. That is exactly what this project is about. From the projects wiki, the Pirate box is a mobile p2p sharing and collaboration platform. Basically it is a wireless hotspot with a slick interface and a shared folder. It doesn’t connect to the internet, and it doesn’t log any connections. You can have a file swapping session simply by flipping it on and sharing its space with other people. They’ve included a step by step guide to setting up your own, but if you’re going to do some subversive file swapping we might suggest putting it in a less conspicuous enclosure. Imagine this as a portable verion of dead drops.