Physical Security For Desktop Computers

November 13, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 134 Comments

There’s a truism in the security circles that says physical security is security. It doesn’t matter how many bits you’ve encrypted your password with, which elliptic curve you’ve used in your algorithm, or if you use a fingerprint, retina scan, or face print for a second factor of authentication. If someone has physical access to a device, all these protections are just road bumps in the way of getting your data. Physical access to a machine means all that data is out in the open, and until now there’s nothing you could do to stop it.

This week at Black Hat Europe, Design-Shift introduced ORWL, a computer that provides the physical security to all the data sitting on your computer.

The first line of protection for the data stuffed into the ORWL is unique key fob radio. This electronic key fob is simply a means of authentication for the ORWL – without it, ORWL simply stays in its sleep mode. If the user walks away from the computer, the USB ports are shut down, and the HDMI output is disabled. While this isn’t a revolutionary feature – something like this can be installed on any computer – that’s not the biggest trick ORWL has up its sleeve.

The big draw to the ORWL is a ‘honeycomb mesh’ that completely covers every square inch of circuit board. This honeycomb mesh is simply a bit of plastic that screws on to the ORWL PCB and connects dozens of electronic traces embedded in this board to a secure microcontroller. If these traces are broken – either through taking the honeycomb shell off or by breaking it wide open, the digital keys that unlock the computer are erased.

The ORWL specs are what you would expect from a bare-bones desktop computer: Intel Skylake mobile processors, Intel graphics, a choice of 4 or 8GB of RAM, 64 to 512GB SSD. WiFi, two USB C ports, and an HDMI port provide all the connections to the outside world.

While this isn’t a computer for everyone, and it may not even a very large deployment, it is an interesting challenge. Physical security rules over all, and it would be very interesting to see what sort of attack can be performed on the ORWL to extract all the data hidden away behind an electronic mesh. Short of breaking the digital key hidden on a key fob, the best attack might just be desoldering the chips for the SSD and transplanting them into a platform more amenable to reading them.

In any event, ORWL is an interesting device if only for being one of the few desktop computers to tackle the problem of physical security. As with any computer, if you have physical access to a device, you have access to all the data on the device; we just don’t know how to get the data off one of these tiny computers.

Video below.

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Self Folding Graphene Paper

November 13, 2015 by Al Williams 2 Comments

Origami, the art of folding paper into shapes, is the latest craft to fall to automation. Researchers in China have published a paper in Science Advances describing how they created graphene-based paper that can fold itself. According to their paper (that is, the paper they wrote, not their graphene paper), the new material can adopt a predefined shape, walk, or even turn a corner.

Active materials like shape memory polymers, aren’t new. But there are many practical problems with using such materials. Using MGMs (Macroscopic Graphene Materials), the researchers created paper that can change shape based on light. temperature, or humidity.

The video below shows a few uses including a self-folding box, a worm-like motion device, and a hand-like piece of paper making a grasping motion. The creators mention that there are a wide range of applications including robotics, artificial muscles, and sensing devices. After watching the video, we couldn’t help but wonder how cool a paper flower that opened in the sunlight would be.

We’ve covered how to make your own graphene in a home lab and even inside a DVD burner. We’ll be interested to see who is the first to hack some graphene paper and what you’ll use it for.

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Seeking Distinct Hardware Passion

November 13, 2015 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

This is it, the Hackaday SuperConference blasts into existence tomorrow. You should be there.

Hardware is passion. Hardware is art. Hardware is creation. Hardware is life. This is your mantra and this weekend is your one chance to connect in person with your community. At this very moment the people presenting 30+ spectacular hardware talks and hands-on workshops are headed to San Francisco to make it happen. They are joined by hundreds of Hackers, Designers, Engineers, Artists, and other Bohemians that make up something unique: a hardware conference that is actually about hardware creation.

You need to be a part of the SuperCon. It runs Saturday and Sunday at Dogpatch Studios. If you can’t make it for both days, block out your Saturday night for the Hackaday Prize Party. Starting at 5:30pm you can catch [Sprite_TM’s] talk, join a fireside chat with MythBusters veteran [Grant Imahara], be there live for the 2015 Hackaday Prize and Best Product award announcements, and then enjoy dinner and the celebration afterward. There is no charge to attend the Prize Party.

There is no better way to spend time than by exercising your passion. Don’t let the Hackaday SuperCon pass you by.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Code Craft – Embedding C++: Timing Virtual Functions

November 13, 2015 by Rud Merriam 38 Comments

Embedded C developers shy away from C++ out of concern for performance. The class construct is one of their main concerns. My previous article Code Craft – Embedding C++: Classes explored whether classes cause code bloat. There was little or no bloat and what is there assures that initialization occurs.

Using classes, and C++ overall, is advantageous because it produces cleaner looking code, in part, by organizing data and the operations on the data into one programming structure. This simple use of classes isn’t the raison d’etre for them but to provide inheritance, or more specifically polymorphism, (from Greek polys, “many, much” and morphē, “form, shape”).

Skeptics feel inheritance simply must introduce nasty increases in timing. Here I once more bravely assert that no such increases occur, and will offer side-by-side comparison as proof.

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Retrotechtacular: A Mechanical UART

November 13, 2015 by Al Williams 44 Comments

We’ve heard it said that no one invented the old mechanical Teletype. One fell from the sky near Skokie, Illinois and people just duplicated them. It is true these old machines were similar to a modern terminal. They sent and received serial data using a printer instead of a screen. But inside, they were mechanical Rube Goldbergs, not full of the electronic circuits you’d think of today.

Teletype was the best-known name, but there were other mechanical monster terminals out there. [Carsten] recently took some pictures of his 99 pound Olivetti mechanical terminal. According to him, there’s only one electronic component within: a bistable solenoid that reads the data. Everything else is mechanical and driven with a motor that keeps everything at the right baud rate (110 baud).

Like the Teletype, it is a miracle these things were able to work as well as they did. Lacking a microcontroller, the terminals could respond to an identity request by spinning a little wheel that had teeth removed to indicate which letters to send (TeleType used a similar scheme). Things that are simple using today’s electronics (like preventing two keys pressed at once from being a problem) turned out to be massive design challenges for these old metal monsters.

Turns out that when [Carsten] last fired the terminal up, a capacitor finally gave up its magic smoke. He plans to fix it, though, and as long as it isn’t a mechanical problem, we bet he will.

We’ve talked about Teletypes a few times in the past, including using them for text messaging and even Twitter.

Is That Google In Your Pants?

November 13, 2015 by Brandon Dunson 15 Comments

Google’s Project Jacquard is tackling the age old gap between controlling your electronic device and touching yourself. They are doing this by weaving conductive thread into clothing in the form of a touch pad. In partnership with Levi Strauss & Co., Google has been designing and producing touch interfaces that are meant to be used by developers however they see fit.

The approach that Project Jacquard has taken from a hardware standpoint is on point. Rather than having an end user product in mind and design completely towards that goal, the project is focused on the interface as its product. This has the added benefit of endless varieties of textile interface possibilities. As stated in the video embedded after the break, the conductive touch interface can be designed as a visibly noticeable difference in material or seamlessly woven into a garment.

As awesome as this new interface may seem there are some things to consider:

Can an unintentional brush with another person “sleeve dial” your boss or mother-in-law?
What are the implications of Google putting sensors in your jeans?
At what point is haptic feedback inappropriate? and do we have to pay extra for that?

We’ve covered e-textiles before from a conductive thread and thru hole components approach to electro-mechanical implementations.

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Build An AM Radio Transmitter From A CPLD

November 12, 2015 by Elliot Williams 35 Comments

[Alex Lao] has been playing around with the CPLD-like parts of a PSoC. Which is to say, he’s been implementing simple logic functions “in hardware” in software. And after getting started with the chip by getting accustomed to the different clock sources, he built a simple AM radio that transmits at 24 MHz.

The device that [Alex] is learning on is a Cypress PSoC 5LP, or more specifically their (cheap) prototyping kit for the part. The chip itself is an ARM microprocessor core with a CPLD and some analog tidbits onboard to make interfacing the micro with the outside world a lot easier. [Alex] doesn’t even mess around with the microprocessor, he’s interested in learning the CPLD side of things.

He starts off with a 24 MHz carrier and a 1 kHz tone signal, and combines them with a logical AND function. When the tone is on, the carrier plays through; that’s AM radio at its most elemental. Everything is logic (square waves) so it’s a messy radio signal, but it’ll get the job done.

Adding a multiplexer up front allows [Alex] to play two tones over his “radio” station. Not bad for some simple logic, and a fantastic Hello World project for a CPLD. We can’t wait to see what [Alex] is up to next!

If you’re interested in getting your feet wet with either CPLDs in general or a CPLD + micro system like Cypress’s, the development kit that [Alex] is using looks like a cheap and painless way to start. (Relatively speaking — PSoCs are a step or two up a steep learning curve from the simpler 8-bit micros or an Arduino.) Hackaday’s own [Bil Herd] has a video on getting started with another member of the Cypres PSoC family, so you should also check that out.