Steve Schear and David Hulton gave a presentation on A5 cracking. A5 is the encryption employed on GSM cellphone networks between the handset and the tower (nowhere else in the network). To sniff the GSM band, they use the GNU radio USRP. GNU radio is a software defined radio project, which given some effort you should be able to both receive and transmit in any RF band. You could use it to broadcast digital television, track radio tags, or even mess with garage door openers. For their initial investigation they used a Nokia 3310 in trace mode to dump the initial frames. Using a box with at least 27 FPGA’s they plan on constructing a 6+ terabyte rainbow table (it’ll take a couple months). Once complete, any GSM conversation can be cracked in less than 5 minutes using a single FPGA. The Hackers Choice has more info on the USRP based GSM analyzer and what they did to crack A5.
Month: August 2007
Gotthard: Intelligent Furniture
[Gloria] sent in Gottard. (English translation). This little box is designed to act as a stool – that happens to follow people around, record their conversations and play them back to other visitors as a form of interaction. A set of rotating casters provide seating support, while a pair of gutted cordless drills move things around. An Aurdino handles the robotic functions., and an iBook handles recording and playback. Ultrasonic sensors guide the movement, and a set of LEDs roughly show how full the recording drive is.
CCCamp 2007: Quad-copters
R/C quad-copters have been quite popular at CCCamp. Our friend, Dan Kaminsky shot this video of two different models in flight. The first is a 10K Euro commercial version, but the second one is a 500 Euro home built one. The commercial unit has a head mounted display so you can fly it from the onboard camera. There is a second video after the break that shows the maneuverability.
DIY Condensor Microphone
[wiesi] sent in his latest condenser mic. Rather than use pre-built components, he built from scratch (except the discrete components). He’s on his second iteration, and things look pretty good. This tends to be the sort of project that amateur radio guys go for… oh wait, I am one.
DIY Plasma Gun
[Richard] took another shot at his battery powered tesla coils. He sent in his latest hand held plasma gun. He modified his battery powered tesla coil to work as a handheld. He added a large copper pad to the drill handle to couple the RF ground to the human torch holding it.. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of tesla lately, but who here wouldn’t want one? (Maybe the guy in the server room…)
All the parts needed are listed – just be sure you fully understand everything before you get into this one.
Wiimote On Your XBox 360
[UberNoober147] and [Carey] both sent in this round about hack. The Wiimote is interfaced with a PC. The PC outputs to a micro-controller circuit that outputs PlayStation 2 control signals. That’s connected to a XFPS – a PS2 to XBox 360 controller converter. It’s definitely round about, but it works.
Back From Vegas Extra
I made it home after a long day of travel. Airport security let me through with my new home server – a 1U dual P3 800Mhz Compaq rackmount that I scored from the guys at UNIX surplus. Yes, it was my carry-on personal item.
Somehow I missed the MIDI tesla coil last month. Thanks to [skuhl] for sending it in. It’s a solid state coil that’s modulated to create one bad-ass midi box. The videos are worth checking out.
[martin] tells me that the Pentax k10d firmware has been hacked for polish menus. I’ll let you guys sort through it, I’m honestly too tired to deal with translating it right now.
[Alex] re-cased a macbook power supply to repair a slightly ripped out power cable. Those power supplies aren’t cheap, so it’s worth noting.
By the way, I’ve got one of the midnight research wicrawl CDs, so ask nice if you want me to put up a torrent.
