PIC USB host shortcuts

[Simon Inns] is still hard at work making USB connectivity for PIC microcontrollers easier for the hobbiest. He’s released a framework for PIC based USB devices under Windows. It includes the firmware needed for USB compatible 18F PIC chips as well as a C# class library and example programs for the Windows side of things. This goes quite a bit … Read the rest

ExoPC shows off some guts

The folks over at Engadget have posted some pictures of the ExoPC’s insides. With the recent return of the tablet craze (remember xp tablet edition?) we’re seeing tablets everywhere. This one has some promise on the hardware side, sporting a 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM.  Unfortunately we’ve heard using solely a tablet interface with windows7 is somewhat cumbersome … Read the rest

Arduino now controlling – the crop harvest?

We’ve seen the Arduino board in charge of some pretty unique tasks in the past. Harvesting locally grown soybeans was not one of them.

[Lance] rigged this beast up in order to automate the monotonous task of driving up and down the vast soybean fields of Iowa. The 15 ton farm combine’s hydraulic steering pump is at the mercy of … Read the rest

Microsoft unveils Open Source multi core OS

group (Custom)

A new operating system, code named Barrelfish is being developed by Microsoft research labs and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. This operating system is being built with multi core operations foremost in priority. It is supposed to be extremely scalable and able to function on a very wide range of hardware. You can download the current snapshot of it on their … Read the rest

Android app “tests” Windows vulnerability

android_windows_vulnerability_checker

An Android App for “testing” the Windows SMB2 vulnerability we covered last week has been released. For testing? Yeah right! The availability of this kind of software makes it ridiculously easy for anybody to go out and cause some havoc. Go right now and double check that your machines that run Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 are protected (see … Read the rest

Cain and Abel: Windows password recovery utility

cain

As far as password recovery utilities go, Cain & Abel is by far one of the best out there. It’s designed to run on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista but has methods to recover passwords for other systems. It is able to find passwords in the local cache, decode scrambled passwords, find wireless network keys or use brute-force and dictionary attacks. For … Read the rest

Windows 7 and Vista crash via SMB exploit

vista_dx10_bsod

[Laurent Gaffié] has discovered an exploit that affects Windows Vista, Windows 7, and possibly Windows Server 2008 (unconfirmed). This method attacks via the NEGOTIATE PROTOCOL REQUEST which is the first SMB query sent. The vulnerability is present only on Windows versions that include Server Message Block 2.0 and have the protocol enabled. A successful attack requires no local access … Read the rest