Phantomdrive Keeps Your Secrets Out Of Sight

August 6, 2026 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

It’s a complex world out there, and more than ever folks may find themselves in a situation where they want to keep particular bits of information away from prying eyes. At the same time, overly complex methods of file security can make it difficult to share said information with the intended recipients impractical. So what’s the solution?

One proposal from [Ryan Walker] AKA [machinehum] is the Phantomdrive — a fully open source USB flash drive that features a secret secondary filesystem. Not only is the existence of this data hidden from the operating system under normal circumstances, but it’s encrypted with AES-256. Rather than relying on software running on the computer to handle the decryption, the CH569 chip that powers the drive does it internally.

To complete this platform-agnostic approach, [machinehum] had to come up with a way for the user to unlock the secure storage that didn’t require running any code on the client machine. A hardware solution such as a keypad is the obvious answer, but in this case, was out of the question as it would immediately tip off an observer about the drive’s true nature. A covert storage device needs a similarly inconspicuous method of authentication.

That’s why the firmware on the Phantomdrive keeps an eye on all the write operations to the unsecured section of the drive looking for the string password:. Once it sees that, it treats whatever follows as the decryption key. If it’s correct, the previously inaccessible data will appear to the operating system as a new drive.

[machinehum] cautions that none of this has been professionally audited from a security standpoint, and that you should treat this whole concept as an experiment. In other words, it’s probably more than sufficient for the average person, but no guarantees on how long it would last should a three letter agency gets too interested in what you’re up to.

If this seems a bit familiar, it’s because the Phantomdrive follows up [machinehum]’s self-destructing USB flash drive from a few years back. The concept is essentially the same, except this time there’s no Magic Smoke getting released.

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Hackaday Links: August 2, 2026

August 2, 2026 by Tom Nardi 2 Comments

About a month ago, we brought you word that the commercial rescue mission designed by Katalyst Space to save NASA’s Swift gamma-ray observatory had reached orbit and early indicators were looking good. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for things to start going sideways, and up until very recently, the situation seemed pretty dire. But according to an interview with Katalyst’s CEO published yesterday by Ars Technica, the company has made some impressive progress on getting things back under control.

For reasons unknown, the robotic vehicle started tumbling out of control last week. Shortly after that, mission controllers lost contact with Swift. After 24 hours without contact from the ground, the spacecraft automatically performed a sort of “hard reset” in an attempt to regain communications. That got it talking again, but somewhere along the way the craft overheated, which in turn cooked the control circuitry for the reaction wheels, which would usually be used to control its orientation. Not great, not terrible.

As of yesterday’s update, we now know that engineers have figured out a way to gimbal the thrust from the craft’s xenon-fueled electric thrusters — which were originally intended for orbit-raising — to counteract its spinning. It’s slow going as these thrusters don’t have a lot of kick, but it seems to be working. We’ll keep an eye on this one and let you know when we know more.

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Thingino Teaches Cheap IP Cameras New Tricks

July 29, 2026 by Tom Nardi 23 Comments

I recently found myself in the market for a few IP cameras to keep an eye on my Prusa 3D printers, and quickly found that the options on the market weren’t exactly ideal. Prusa does offer up an official camera, but the price for a pair of them was a bit more than I wanted to spend on the project. Conversely, there’s no shortage of cheap network-connected cameras available online, but they come with expenses of a different sort, namely proprietary software and cloud services I didn’t want or need.

Somewhere in the deep and dark recesses of this particular rabbit hole, I came across a Reddit post mentioning how a camera running the community-developed Thingino firmware could be plugged into Prusa’s remote printer monitoring scheme. It wasn’t a project I’d heard of previously, and sure enough, a search of the Hackaday back catalog showed we’d never come across it before.

My interest was already piqued, but the discovery that I already owned a supported camera sealed the deal. It was time to explore a new entry in one of my absolute favorite project categories: an open source replacement firmware that turns a cheap consumer device into something more than the sum of its parts.

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Hackaday Links: July 26, 2026

July 26, 2026 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

At a time when so-called “artificial intelligence” seems inescapable, we were encouraged to see news that Amazon will be cracking down on third-party sellers that use AI-generated images for their product listings. They won’t be prevented from using the images, but they will need to clearly indicate that they don’t represent reality and were produced via artificial means. This comes in response to a recently enacted New York law that requires the disclosure of AI in advertisements.

Will this be the end of the cat sleeping bag?

But it’s not quite a clear cut as it might seem on the surface, as the New York law is actually about AI-generated people rather than products. Specifically, it’s designed to make it clear when a “synthetic performer” has been used in place of a human actor. As such, it would appear that the easiest way for Amazon sellers to dodge the new rule is to simply not include any humans in their AI slop images and videos. In other words, they can continue to post fake pictures of products without having to inform the consumer so long as they don’t show a fake person holding it.

Under normal circumstances we’d leave something like this next one for our weekly security column, but the utter lack of security in the Pope’s official “Click To Pray” mobile application revealed by researcher BobDaHacker on Friday is just too good a story to pass up. For one thing, who knew that there was an “official” prayer app? We don’t dabble in theology around these parts, but we’re fairly sure the good book didn’t mention anything about requiring a smartphone to give praise.

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Hackaday Podcast Episode 379: Driving E-ink DIY, NES On ESP, And The Other IRC

July 24, 2026 by Tom Nardi 1 Comment

On this episode, Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi discuss their love of electronic paper, clunky cartridges, and keeping old games alive by any means possible. You’ll also hear about getting the most out of the sensors in our 3D printers, playing with X-rays at home, a ring that runs Java, and a roulette wheel that outgrew its 555 timer. Stick around to the end to learn about a different sort of IRC that’s even more niche than the one you’re probably familiar with, as well as the logistical challenges and potential benefits of catching rockets with a giant net.

Check out the links if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download in DRM-free MP3.

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Dress Up Your YubiKey With This Web-Based Tool

July 22, 2026 by Tom Nardi 6 Comments

The combination of hardware required to make use of this project is specific enough that we imagine only a relatively limited number of readers will actually be able to try it out. But if you do happen to own a YubiKey and either a laser engraver capable of marking it or a fancy UV printer, [madeinoz67] has put together an awesome tool for adding some visual flair to your two-factor authentication device.

Running it is as simple as opening a web page, because that’s exactly how it’s implemented. You can either host it yourself or just launch it right from the GitHub repository. After opening the HTML file, you’re presented with a fairly intuitive user interface that lets you draw on top of a 2D outline of the YubiKey itself so you can get a better idea of what the final product will look like.

You can pick from an array of vector icons, upload your own images, and add custom text. There’s a pull-down at the top that lets you pick which specific YubiKey you want to work with, and there are different views depending on whether you plan on blasting your handiwork onto the device with a laser, doing a full-color UV print, or cutting it out of vinyl with something like a Cricut.

Even if you don’t have a YubiKey that’s begging for some custom artwork, we think there’s a lot to learn from this project. Obviously there are some very valid reasons to be concerned about how much of our modern software can only be accessed through a browser. If you’re going to use web technologies to create a piece of software, the least you could do is make it offline and self-contained like [madeinoz67] has.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to go warm up the UV printer.

Launching Rockets Is Hard, Bringing Them Back Is Harder

July 20, 2026 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

Since the first V2 rocket sailed above the Kármán line back in 1944 and right up until the modern era, the trajectory of most space-bound rockets was more or less the same: after expending their propellants they would either crash into some desolate steppe or plunge into the ocean. In either event, the rocket was disposable. The important bit up top might go on to explore the stars or send a human crew off on their mission, but the booster rocket that lifted the spacecraft out of the atmosphere was always going to be sacrificed for the cause.

But in the 1970s NASA had a wild idea: what if we didn’t smash a brand-new rocket valued at millions of dollars into the ocean every time we wanted to put something in orbit? Instead, they would build a hybrid space vehicle that blended the vertical takeoff and raw power of a rocket with the capabilities of an airplane, allowing it and whatever it was carrying to make a gentle runway landing at the end of its mission. As such, the Space Shuttle was born.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know the Shuttle wasn’t quite the spaceflight revolution that NASA had hoped for. The age of reusable rockets didn’t truly begin until 2015, when SpaceX landed the first stage of their Falcon 9. To date they’ve repeated the feat nearly 600 times, all the while increasing the reliability and speed of their operations. Today the Falcon 9 is the most prolific launch vehicle in history, and nearly every other rocket in active development is being designed to include some element of reusability.

Most recently, China demonstrated that they could recover their Long March 10B rocket by gently bringing it down into what amounts to a giant butterfly net. While it might seem a bit quaint compared to rockets that land on their tails like something out of a 1950s sci-fi movie, the idea offers considerable promise.

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