[Bruno]‘s Wii RetroPad Adapter was sent into the tip line, and we’re loving the possibility of using Playstation 2, Genesis, NES and SNES controllers with our Wii.

While there are commercial solutions that connect an NES or SNES controller to a Wii, everything connects to the GameCube port and there is no adapter for Sega or Playstation controllers. For his build, [Bruno] used an ATmega168 to read data from the classic controllers and translate that to the Wiimote I2C bus. Think of it as a new classic controller with the same form factor your 8-year-old self knew and loved.

The schematic for the build is very simple and [Bruno] has all the software out in the open. Even the PCB is single sided and looks like it would be a great candidate for a homebrew PCB. There’s no indication [Bruno] is trying to monetize his creation, so he’s either doing right, or so very wrong. Check out the Dualshock 2/Mario 3 demo of this board after the break.

When it comes to Rock Band, our friends suck at singing. No, really.

We’re cool with them beating on the drum set completely off-time, but the sound of them trying to sing “Tom Sawyer” makes us want to cut out our eardrums.

We’re willing to bet that Cornell students [Gautam Kamath and Dominick Grochowina] have friends like ours. Their Electrical and Computer Engineering final project aims to remove the tone deaf from in front of the microphone, allowing a computer to sing vocals instead.

Since Rock Band simply listens for the proper frequency to be sung, the pair figured it would be easy enough to monitor the game’s output and feed computer-generated signals back into the microphone. Once the game’s vocal bar is isolated via a series of filters, an ATMega644 is used to interpret the notes and generate the corresponding tone via a speaker.

While automating Rock Band gameplay is nothing new, we don’t recall seeing anyone try to cut the singer from the band. We think it’s a pretty cool concept – rock on!

Edit: Updated with video

If you are not a gamer, or simply a casual player, you may not have heard about the recent breach of Sony’s Playstation Network. In short, the network was infiltrated on April 17th, and the service was completely shut down on the 19th as a precautionary measure. Now, more than a week later services have yet to be restored, but Sony is finally starting to talk a bit more about what happened.

At this point, nobody knows the total extent of the data stolen, but stories are emerging that indicate just about everything that could be accessed was accessed. Sony admits that information such as names, addresses, passwords, and security questions have all been accessed by an unauthorized third party. They have also not completely ruled out the possibility that credit card data has been stolen as well.

It seems the situation has turned from a mere inconvenience to PSN users into a full-blown security and PR nightmare. After a breach like this with so many questions left unanswered, and the gaming network rendered completely useless, we have to ask:

When everything is “fixed” and back to normal, what could Sony possibly do to regain your trust?

It looks like Sony and [George Hotz] have reached an out-of-court settlement in the case brought against the hacker who is more well-known as [Geohot].

This is the end (we think) of an ongoing saga that originally drew our ire when Sony remove OtherOS support as a sledge-hammer-type fix for holes that [Geohot] found in the security system used by PlayStation 3 hardware. Our beef with that move is that it punished people who bought a PS3 knowing that it could run Linux natively, only to have that rug retroactively pulled out from under them. [Geohot] then went on to publish details that allow those with the proper skills to leave a smoldering pile of slag where Sony’s hardware security used to reside.

They slapped him with a lawsuit for publishing those details. This settlement doesn’t have him admitting any wrongdoing. We’re not going to editorialize on the morals or ethics of [George's] actions, but we do still think that Sony greatly overreacted at several points along this unfortunate string of events.

[Thanks Buggs187]

The newest member of the PS3 jailbreaking tool crowd is the iPod family. More specifically, iPods running the open source media firmware Rockbox. Even better news, theoretically it should be possible to use this same method on any MP3 player running the Rockbox software. Right now the exploit package only works on select generations of the iPod Nano and iPod Classic line, but if the trend set by the PSX-scene forums continues, it would be worth checking back in the near future if your device is not already supported. Thanks to [shuffle2] for providing the hack, and [DanAdamKOF] for the heads up.

If Apple isn’t your device of choice, you can also check out some of your other jailbreaking options.

Here’s a homebrew remote control that [Jad Berro] is developing. He’s using a tank robot to test it out but eventually he plans to use it to control an RC plane thanks the 434 MHz wireless module inside. There’s no shortage of input, with two analog sticks from a PlayStation controller, several momentary push buttons, and some toggle switches. Although it’s not shown in the picture above there is also a 16×2 character display that serves as part of the interface. With a navigable menu the only limit to what you can do is the programming space available on the ATmega168 that inhabits the homemade Arduino board at the heart of the system. It certainly would give the robot remote from Friday a run for its money.

Anyone who has tried their hand at RPG Maker 1 (or any text input with a controller) knows how difficult it can be typing long paragraphs into the console. [Thutmose] is here to save the day with Kupid 1.0 (2.0 in production). A PICAXE takes ps/2 keyboard input and converts it to a series of d-pad button presses for PS1 and PS2 controllers, providing quick data entry compared to the previously monotonous task.

We’re happy to learn that the source code and hardware is released, meaning it has the potential to be easily adapted to any controller/console.

On April first Sony rolled out new firmware for the PlayStation 3 that removed the ability to install Linux on the system by blocking a feature called OtherOS. Now a class action lawsuit has been filed against the company for its actions. It doesn’t take an attorney to figure out that they removed features that were a major selling point for the system. As mentioned in our previous article, the ability to use an exploit to access the hardware doesn’t mean that every user installing Linux on the system plans to do so. The suit asserts that users had no opportunity to negotiate the System Software Licensing Agreement which is only presented to a purchase after the sale is made. The lawsuit is availble in PDF from from IGN.

Who knows where this one will end up. The suit seeks an injunction against the removal of the OtherOS feature as well as compensatory damages. No matter what happens, we still think the removal was a bad move on Sony’s part.

[Thanks Shueddue]

[TokyoDrift] built an adapter that allows you to connect a PlayStation 2 controller to a PlayStation Portable. It’s a bit different from similar hacks as this adapter doesn’t require any hardware alteration to the PSP or the controller. To do so, a plug-in is used on the PSP firmware side of things. The adapter then makes use of video out and PS2 controller extension cables, along with an ATmega8 microcontroller to handle the signals between the two devices. We posted a picture of the guts because we like that king of thing but the finished project is nicely housed inside of a project box. See for yourself in the video after the break.

If you liked this hack, check out [TokyoDrift's] method of using a mouse with a PSP.

[Jarek] found a non-functional robotic arm sitting around and wanted to get it working again. By adding a few custom boards to an Arduino he managed to do just that.

The arm is driven by six stepper motors, each having four control wires. To handle all of these [Jarek] used TIP120 transistors to protect the controller. This still leaves the problem of 24 control wires to connect. By using a couple of 74HC4514 demultiplex chips he cut that number down to just 8 Arduino control pins. He completed the project by interfacing an original Playstation controller as the input device.

Source code for the project is available for download but we didn’t see a schematic for his setup. This shouldn’t be a problem as the low parts count should mean the datasheets for the transistors and demultiplexers are all you really need.

[Hailrazer] built a handheld GameCube so he could take his gaming with him. The final product is quite nice, providing a large display and about 3 hours of play time on the lithium polymer batteries.

Starting with the case from a Kidz Delight Datamax game, he used Bondo ABS cement and plastic bumper filler to alter the case but still provide a professional look. The display is a five-inch PlayStation One LCD Screen from which he also incorporated the speakers. At least four controllers were cannibalized for use as the buttons, sticks, triggers, and directional pad. Our favorite feature is the totally exposed optical head mounted on the back.

We’ve embedded video as well as a picture of the optical drive after the break. This goes so far beyond just making the GameCube an all-in-one system. If you like this build, check out the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast mods on [Hailrazer's] YouTube channel.

[Thanks Palmer]

[Ray] had a Guitar Hero controller for PlayStation 2 sitting around. Because he moved on to playing the game on Xbox 360, he decided to cannibalize the older controller for its parts. He removed the strum bar and fit it inside of a mid-1980′s Peavy Patriot electric guitar. Once wired up, it works as a kill switch; it stops all sound from making it to the amp whenever the strum bar switch is actuated. Don’t miss hearing this effect in the video after the break and keep sending in those Guitar Hero mods.

[Thanks Sebastian]

Recently, a Japanese coder on the DCEmu Forums released Windows drivers for DualShock 3 controllers. While the drivers only support using the controllers over USB and not bluetooth, they do include force feedback and Sixaxis support. Included with the drivers is a configuration tool, and though it appears to be in Japanese there is some explanation of how to use it included in the forum post. We have not tested these personally, but you can try out the drivers for yourself  by downloading them from the forum here.

[photo: William Hook]

[matiaz] has released an exploit which allows homebrew on the PSP3000. It takes advantage of a vulnerability when loading save games on a game called GripShift. You can see the PSP running unsigned code in the video.

[thanks wraggy]

A team of security researchers and academics has broken a core piece of internet technology. They made their work public at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin today. The team was able to create a rogue certificate authority and use it to issue valid SSL certificates for any site they want. The user would have no indication that their HTTPS connection was being monitored/modified.

This attack is possible because of a flaw in MD5. MD5 is a hashing algorithm; each unique file has a unique hash. In 2004, a team of Chinese researchers demonstrated creating two different files that had the same MD5 hash. In 2007, another team showed theoretical attacks that took advantage of these collisions. The team focused on SSL certificates signed with MD5 for their exploit.

The first step was doing some broad scans to see what certificate authorities (CA) were issuing MD5 signed certs. They collected 30K certs from Firefox trusted CAs. 9K of them were MD5 signed. 97% of those came from RapidSSL.

Having selected their target, the team needed to generate their rogue certificate to transfer the signature to. They employed the processing power of 200 Playstation 3s to get the job done. For this task, it’s the equivalent of 8000 standard CPU cores or $20K of Amazon EC2 time. The task takes ~1-2 days to calculate. The tricky part was knowing the content of the certificate that would be issued by RapidSSL. They needed to predict two variables: the serial number and the timestamp. RapidSSL’s serial numbers were all sequential. From testing, they knew that RapidSSL would always sign six seconds after the order was acknowledged. Knowing these two facts they were able to generate a certificate in advance and then purchase the exact certificate they wanted. They’d purchase certificates to advance the serial number and then buy on the exact time they calculated.

The cert was issued to their particular domain, but since they controlled the content, they changed the flags to make themselves an intermediate certificate authority. That gave them authority to issue any certificate they wanted. All of these ‘valid’ certs were signed using SHA-1.

If you set your clock back to before August 2004, you can try out their live demo site. This time is just a security measure for the example and this would work identically with a certificate that hasn’t expired. There’s a project site and a much more detailed writeup than this.

To fix this vulnerability, all CAs are now using SHA-1 for signing and Microsoft and Firefox will be blacklisting the team’s rogue CA in their browser products.