This Week In Security: It’s Con Season

August 11, 2023 by 8 Comments

It must be Blackhat/DEFCON season. Up first in the storm of named vulnerabilities, we have Downfall. The PDF has the juicy details here. It’s quite similar to the Zenbleed issue from last week, in that it abuses speculative execution to leak data via a hidden register. Unlike Zenbleed, this isn’t direct access, but using cache timing analysis to extract individual bytes using a FLUSH+RELOAD approach.

The key to the vulnerability is the gather instruction, which pulls data from multiple locations in memory, often used to run a followup instruction on multiple bytes of data at once. The gather instruction is complex, takes multiple clock cycles to execute, and uses several tricks to execute faster, including managing buffers to avoid multiple reads. In certain cases, that instruction can be interrupted before it completes, leaving the data in the cache. And this data can be speculatively accessed and the values leaked through timing analysis.

This flaw affects 6th generation Intel Core processors through 11th. Mitigations are already rolling out via a microcode update, but do carry a performance hit for gather instructions. Continue reading “This Week In Security: It’s Con Season” →

DisplayPort: Tapping The Altmode

July 24, 2023 by 11 Comments

Really, the most modern implementation of DisplayPort is the USB-C DisplayPort altmode, synonymous with “video over USB-C”, and we’d miss out if I were to skip it. Incidentally, our last two articles about talking USB-PD have given a few people a cool new toy to play with – people have commented on the articles, reached out to me for debugging help, and I’ve even seen people build the FUSB302B into their projects! Hot on the heels of that achievement, let’s reach further and conquer one more USB-C feature – one that isn’t yet openly available for us to hack on, even though it deserves to be.

For our long-time readers, it’s no surprise to see mundane capabilities denied to hackers. By now, we all know that many laptops and phones let you get a DisplayPort connection out of a USB-C port. Given that the USB-C specifications are openly available, and we’ve previously implemented a PD sink using those specifications, you’d expect that we could do DisplayPort with the same ease. Yet, the DisplayPort altmode specification is behind a VESA membership paywall, with a hefty pricetag – a practice of theirs that has been widely criticized, counter to their purpose as a standards organization and having resulted in some of their standards failing.

Not to worry, however – we can easily find an assortment of PDFs giving a high-level overview and some details of the DisplayPort altmode, and here’s my favorite! I also have a device running MicroPython with a FUSB302 chip connected, and a few DisplayPort altmode devices of mine that I can disassemble. This, turns out, is more than enough for us to reverse-engineer our way into an open-source DisplayPort altmode library!

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Hackaday Podcast 228: Bats, Eggs, Lasers, Duck Tape, And Assembly Language

July 21, 2023 by 1 Comment

Summer’s in full swing, and this week both Elliot and Dan had to sweat things out to get the podcast recorded. But the hacks were cool — see what I did there? — and provided much-needed relief. Join us as we listen in on the world of bats, look at a laser fit for a hackerspace, and learn how to make an array of magnets greater than — or less than — the sum of its parts. There’ll be flying eggs, keyboards connected to cell phones, and everything good about 80s and 90s cable TV, as well as some of the bad stuff. And you won’t want to miss Elliot putting Dan to shame with the super-size Quick Hacks, either, nor should you skip the Can’t Miss sweep with a pair of great articles by Al Williams.

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

Download a long series of ones and zeroes that, when appropriately interpreted, sound like two people talking about nerdy stuff!

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This Week In Security: Malwarebytes Goes Nuts, Uber

September 23, 2022 by 12 Comments

I got a rude awakening Wednesday morning this week. HaD writers don’t necessarily keep normal hours — don’t judge. A local client called, complaining that Google Maps was blocking on one of their computers, and the browser stated that it was a malicious site. Well that got my attention. Standard incident response: “Turn off the affected computers, I’m on my way.” Turns out, it was Malwarebytes that was complaining and blocking Google Maps, as well as multiple other Google domains. That particular machine happened to have a fresh install of the program, and was still in the trial period of Malwarebytes premium, which includes the malicious IP and domain blocking feature.

Oof, this could be bad. The first possibility that came to mind was a DNS hijack. The desktop’s DNS was set to the router, and the router’s DNS was set to the ISP’s. Maybe the ISP had their DNS servers compromised? Out came the cell phone, disconnected from the WiFi, for DNS lookups on some Google domains. Because Google operates at such a massive scale, they have multiple IPs serving each domain, but since the two different results were coming from the same subnet, the suspicious DNS server was likely OK. A whois on the blocked IP also confirmed that it was a Google-owned address. We were running out of explanations, and as a certain fictional detective was known for saying, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” And, yes, Malwarebytes did indeed accidentally add Google to its bad list. The upside was that my customer wasn’t compromised. The downside? I had to answer a phone call before my first cup of coffee. Blegh.

Continue reading “This Week In Security: Malwarebytes Goes Nuts, Uber” →

A r0tring CS-50 scriber. You type, it writes the letters with a pen on your blueprint or technical drawing.

Plotting To Restore A R0tring CS-50

September 29, 2021 by 8 Comments

If you’re of a certain vintage and have ever done any technical drawing, chances are good that you used a r0tring of some kind, be it pencil or pen. Well, r0tring makes more than writing implements.  They also made electronic scribers — a small plotter that pens ISO lettering on technical drawings based on typed input. This was a huge time saver over doing it freehand or stenciling each letter. The CS-50 is designed to hold the top-of-the-line r0tring drawing pen, which turned out to be the most expensive part of this restoration aside from the time spent sniffing out issues.

[Atkelar] likes to open things up and give them a visual inspection before powering them on. We think this is good practice, even if the suspense kills you. But really, [Atkelar] did so much more than that. He started by replacing the likely late-80s-era coin cell even though it registered north of 3 V. Then he swapped out all the electrolytic caps and one tantalum, cleaned the rubber dome keyboard parts with a cheap electric toothbrush, (another great idea), and completely disassembled the x-y mechanism to clean and re-oil it.

Continue reading “Plotting To Restore A R0tring CS-50” →

Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Chinese Typewriter

June 21, 2021 by 12 Comments

As much as I’d like to devote an article to each and every bit of keyboard-related what-have-you that I come across in my travels through the intertubes, there just aren’t enough hours. And after all, this isn’t Clack-a-Day. To that end, I gained editorial approval to bring you a periodic round-up of news and other tidbits on the keyboard and keyboard accessories front, and here we are. So let’s get to it!

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2020: As The Hardware World Turns

December 29, 2020 by 13 Comments

By pretty much any metric you care to use, 2020 has been an unforgettable year. Usually that would be a positive thing, but this time around it’s a bit more complicated. The global pandemic, unprecedented in modern times, impacted the way we work, learn, and gather. Some will look back on their time in lockdown as productive, if a bit lonely. Other’s have had their entire way of life uprooted, with no indication as to when or if things will ever return to normal. Whatever “normal” is at this point.

But even in the face of such adversity, there have been bright spots for our community. With traditional gatherings out of the question, many long-running tech conferences moved over to a virtual format that allowed a larger and more diverse array of presenters and attendees than would have been possible in the past. We also saw hackers and makers all over the planet devote their skills and tools to the production of personal protective equipment (PPE). In a turn of events few could have predicted, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic helped demonstrate the validity of hyperlocal manufacturing in a way that’s never happened before.

For better or for worse, most of us will associate 2020 with COVID-19 for the rest of our lives. Really, how could we not? But over these last twelve months we’ve borne witness to plenty of stories that are just as deserving of a spot in our collective memories. As we approach the twilight hours of this most ponderous year, let’s take a look back at some of the most interesting themes that touched our little corner of the tech world this year.

Continue reading “2020: As The Hardware World Turns” →