Hollywood Finally Gets Hacking Right With Mr. Robot

August 24, 2015 by Adam Fabio 114 Comments

Author’s note: I’m keeping spoilers out of this article, but they will surely show up in the comments.

A few weeks ago I started hearing about a new show on the USA network, Mr. Robot. The synopsis for the show was “Mr. Robot is a psychological thriller that follows a young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and a vigilante hacker by night.” Yeah, that sounds like another Hollywood crapfest. Cue crazy GUIs and virtual reality flybys representing hacking scenes. After watching the pilot though, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was hooked for the entire 10 week first season.

Let’s start with the hacking, which is the whole reason this article is here on Hackaday. Show creator [Sam Esmail] isn’t a hacker himself, but he is tech savvy enough to see how poorly hacking has been portrayed on TV and in the movies. He knew he could do it better. The solution was good consultants, in the form of [Michael Bazzell] and others. The team helped shape the show into a rather realistic portrayal of hacking techniques. Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), the main character, is the “vigilante” hacker described in the synopsis. Within the first 10 minutes of the pilot, he is turning a child pornographer in to the police. How does he catch the creeper? Tor exit node exploits, of course.

The onion routing protocol is not as anonymous as you think it is. Whoever’s in control of the exit nodes is also in control of the traffic, which makes me the one in control.

This is an accurate description of some of the exploits which have been demonstrated on the tor network. There aren’t any VR hacking scenes to be found either. In fact, several characters watch and make fun of the “flu shot” scene in Hackers. In this show, the command line isn’t hidden, it’s celebrated. We see every command the characters type, from netstat to CAN bus dumps. In one scene, Elliot even fires up a windows virtual machine so he can run DeepSound on his Kali Linux box.

The hacking isn’t all software either. Everyone’s favorite Linux single board computer is featured prominently in the first season. We can’t knock a show where a character looks at another and says “Ok, we all know what a Raspberry Pi is, what’s your point?”

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Hacklet 71 – Waterborne Projects

August 21, 2015 by Adam Fabio 2 Comments

Water: Life on earth wouldn’t exist without it. 71 percent of the Earth is covered by water. That only leaves 29 percent for us humans to live – and not all of that land is inhabitable. Water is so important that most human settlements start near water of some sort. Water to drink, or water to move goods. With all this water in oceans, lakes, and rivers, it is no surprise that hackers, makers, and engineers alike build some incredible projects that work on and under the water.

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You Can Have My TIPs When You Pry Them From My Cold, Dead Hands

August 17, 2015 by Adam Fabio 154 Comments

We’ve seen a growing number of posts and recommendations around the net regarding components, specifically transistors. “Don’t use old parts” they cry, “Go with newer components.” You can often find these recommendations on Arduino forums. This all came to a head with a page called “Do Not TIP,” which was linked in the Arduino subreddit. This page belongs to [Tom Jennings], creator of Fidonet, and one of the early authors of what would become Phoenix BIOS. [Tom] and a few others have been calling for everyone to send their old parts to the landfill – not use them, nor gift them to new experimenters. Get them out of the food chain. No offense to [Tom], but we have to disagree. These parts are still perfectly usable for experienced designers, and have a lot to offer new hardware hackers.

TIP is the part number prefix for a series of power transistors created by Texas Instruments. In fact, “TIP” stands for Texas Instruments Power. The series was originally released in 1969. Yes, that’s right, 1969. Why are we still using parts designed when man first walked on the moon? The same reason people are still using the 555 timer: they’re simple, they’re easily available, they’re robust, and most of all, they get the job done. The TIP series has been used in thousands of classes, tutorials both online and off, and millions of projects over the years. Much of that documentation is already out there on the internet. The TIP series is also out in the distribution channel – they’ve been used for 40 years. Any retail shop that stocks a few electronics parts will have at least one of the TIP series.

The TIP series aren’t always the best transistors for the job. However, for most hobbyist-designed circuits, we don’t need the best performance, nor the best price – we’re going to use the parts we have on hand. There is always room to improve once you get the basic circuit working.

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Hacklet 70 – Calculator Projects

August 14, 2015 by Adam Fabio 4 Comments

Hackers, makers, and engineers have long had a love affair with number crunching. Specifically with the machines that make crunching numbers easier. Today it may be computers, smart watches, and smartphones, but that wasn’t always the case. In the 50’s and 60’s, Slide rules were the rage. Engineers would carry them around in leather belt pouches. By the early 70’s though, the pocket calculator revolution had begun. Calculators have been close at hand for hackers and engineers ever since. This week’s Hacklet celebrates some of the best calculator projects on Hackaday.io!

We start with [Joey Shepard] and RPN Scientific Calculator. No equals sign needed here; [Joey] designed this calculator to work with Reverse Polish notation, just like many of HP’s early machines. Stacks are pretty important for RPN calculators, and this one has plenty of space with dual 200 layer stacks. The two main processors are MSP430s from Texas Instruments. The user interface are a 4 line x 20 character LCD and 42 hand wired buttons. The two processors are pretty ingenious. They communicate over a UART. One processor handles the keyboard and display, while the other concentrates on crunching the numbers and storing data in an SRAM. The case for this calculator is made from soldered up copper clad board. It’s mechanically strong especially since [Joey] added a bead of solder along each joint. If you want to learn more about this technique check out this guide on FR4 enclosures.

[Joey] definitely improved his solder skills with this project. Every wire and connection, including the full SRAM address and data bus were wired by hand on proto boards. We especially like the sweet looking laser cut keyboard on this project!
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Oracle CSO To Customers: Leave The Vulnerabilities To Us

August 11, 2015 by Adam Fabio 60 Comments

[Mary Ann Davidson], chief security officer of Oracle, is having a bad Tuesday. The internet has been alight these past few hours over a blog post published and quickly taken down from oracle’s servers. (archive) We’re not 100% sure the whole thing isn’t a hack of some sort. Based on [Mary’s] previous writing though, it seems to be legit.

The TL;DR version of Mary’s post is that she’s sick and tired of customers reverse engineering Oracle’s code in an attempt to find security vulnerabilities. Doing so is a clear violation of Oracle’s license agreement. Beyond the message, the tone of the blog says a lot. This is the same sort of policy we’re seeing on the hardware side from companies like John Deere and Sony. Folks like [Cory Doctorow] and the EFF are doing all they can to fight it. We have to say that we do agree with [Mary] on one point: Operators should make sure their systems are locked down with the latest software versions, updates, and patches before doing anything else.

[Mary] states that “Bug bounties are the new boy band”, that they simply don’t make sense from a business standpoint. Only 3% of Oracles vulnerabilities came from security researchers. The rest come from internal company testing. The fact that Oracle doesn’t have a bug bounty program might have something to do with that. [Mary] need not worry. Bug Bounty or not, she’s placed her company squarely in the cross-hairs of plenty of hackers out there – white hat and black alike.

Building A Dead-On-Accurate Model Ford Pickup From Scratch

August 8, 2015 by Adam Fabio 11 Comments

In a world filled with 3D printed this and CNC machined that, it’s always nice to see someone who still does things the old-fashioned way. [Headquake137] built a radio controlled truck body (YouTube link) from wood and polystyrene using just a saw, a Dremel, a hobby knife, and a lot of patience. This is one of those builds that blurs the lines between scale model and sculpture. There aren’t too many pickup trucks one might call “iconic” but if we were to compile a list, the 6th generation Ford F-series would be on it. [Headquake137’s] model is based on a 1977 F100.

The build starts with the slab sides of the truck. The basic outline is cut into a piece of lumber which is then split with a handsaw to create a left and a right side. From there, [Headquake137’s] uses a Dremel to carve away anything that doesn’t look like a 1977 F100. He adds pieces of wood for the roof, hood, tailgate, and the rest of the major body panels. Small details like the grille and instrument panel are created with white polystyrene sheet, an easy to cut material often used by train and car modelers.

When the paint starts going on, the model really comes to life. [Headquake137] weathers the model to look like it’s seen a long life on the farm. The final part of the video covers the test drive of the truck, now mounted to a custom chassis. The chassis is designed for trails and rock crawling, so it’s no speed demon, but it sure does look the part riding trails out in the woods!

[Headquake137] managed to condense what must have been a 60 or 70 hour build down to a 14 minute video found below.

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Hacklet 69 – Morse Code Projects

August 7, 2015 by Adam Fabio 10 Comments

With over 160 years of history under its belt, Morse code is by far the oldest digital signaling system known to man. Originally developed for telegraph systems, [Samuel Morse’s] code has been sent over wires, via radio, and even with flashes of light. Hackers, makers and engineers have been working with Morse code throughout history. For many years, simple code keys and practice oscillators were the “hello world” of hobby electronics. In fact, a company which started out selling a Morse key has gone on to become one of the largest electronic component distributors in the world. The company still bears the name of that project: Digi-Key. This week’s Hacklet is all about some of the best Morse code projects on Hackaday.io!

We start with [voxnulla] and Morse key HID + ugly hack. [voxnulla] found an old key at his favorite thrift store. It was dusty, greasy, and for some reason had been painted hospital green. Once the paint and grime were removed, and the original wooden plate restored, the key actually looked pretty good. [Voxnulla] then decided to turn it into a USB Human Interface Device (HID), emulating the keyboard of his computer. An Arduino converts Morse code characters tapped at the key into keystrokes over USB. As [voxnulla] knows, when butterflies aren’t available, real programmers drive vim with a Morse key!

Next up is [Voja Antonic] with Daddy, I don’t have the key. If you didn’t read [Voja’s] article about Hacking the Digital and Social System, check it out! Many apartments have an intercom system where you have to “buzz” someone in, activating a solenoid lock in the door. [Voja] inserted a Microchip PIC12 series microcontroller between the speaker and the unlock button. All a user has to do is tap out the right Morse code password on the call button in the lobby. If the code is accepted, the PIC unlocks the door, and you’re in!

[kodera2t] took things into the digital age with Stand-alone Tiny Morse code encoder/decoder. This project grew out of his general purpose Portable tiny IoT device project. [kodera2t] rolled his own Arduino-compatible board for this project. The tiny ATmega1284 powered computer allows him to encode and decode Morse code. A smartphone-sized keyboard and a lilliputian OLED display serve as the user interface, while rotary encoder allows for variable code speed. You can even “tap” Morse out on one of the tactile buttons!

Finally, we have [Yannick (Gigawipf)] with Portable (morsing) 100W led flashlight. 100 watt LEDs have gotten quite cheap these days, and they’re perfect when you absolutely, positively have to blind everyone around you. These LEDs can also be switched on and off quickly, which makes them perfect for Morse code. In years past, mechanical shutters had to be used to perform the same feat. [Yannick] used a 5000mAh 5S Zippy Li-Po to supply electrons to this hungry beast, while a 600 Watt constant current boost converter keeps that power under control. An Arduino running Morse code converter software controls the boost convert and LED. [Yannick] uses his computer to send a message over the Arduino’s serial link, and the light does the rest, flashing out the message for all to see.

If you want more Morse goodness, check out our brand new Morse code project list! My Morse is a bit rusty, so if I wasn’t able to copy your transmission and missed your project, don’t hesitate to drop me a message on Hackaday.io. That’s it for this week’s Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!