The Ottawa Mini Maker Faire took place this past weekend at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. I was in town and decided to check it out. After the break, check out some of the projects that I saw at the Faire.
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Free Hackaday Stuff At Next Week’s Open Hardware Summit
If you’re headed off to the Open Hardware Summit next week we’ve got some free swag for you. Readers paying any attention know that Hackaday was acquired by Supply Frame over the summer. There had been some nervousness in the comments about what this all means. But I think you’ll agree it’s a good sign that Supply Frame is one of the major sponsors of the event at the ‘FANATIC’ level.
Several of the Supply Frame guys will be attending (which makes me jealous since I want one of those ePaper display badges so badly!). Details haven’t quite firmed up yet, but we believe there will be a Supply Frame booth were you can stop by, chat, and see if they’ve got any Hackaday T-shirts left to hand out. Â I don’t think they’ll run out of stickers so you won’t go away empty handed.
Also ask them for a beta code for the hush-hush new online tool which they’ve been working on. I got a preview when I visited their headquarters in Pasadena last week. It’s something that EE and hobby electronics enthusiasts will appreciate as it simplifies the planning and part choosing process of a design. Actually, now that I think of it, it solves a problem I’ve heard [Dave Jones] rant about before on the Amp hour. Obviously I’m under a bit of an info embargo until they get the service fully online but I’m sure we’ll cover it once they do. Incidentally, one of the devs on this project — [Ben Delarre] — founded CircuitBee.
Our own [Eric Evenchick] will be on hand as well. He’s still networking for future employment so you might not find him just sitting at the SF booth. He will have Hackaday stickers to hand out as well since I felt bad about not sending swag along with him to Def Con. Look for his recollection of the event once it is all wrapped up.
Worry not if you can’t attend OHS. [Brian Benchoff] is planning a trip to World Maker Faire later in September and he’ll be packing a stash of freebies as well!
DEF CON: Hacking Charities And Routers
Where’s Cardboard Snowden?
On the last day of DEF CON, I talked to some charity hackers, checked out the lockpicking village, and learned how insecure my router is in the wireless village.
DEF CON: Tamper Evidence, Contests, And Embedded Talks
For day two of DEF CON, I checked out tamper evident devices, the contests area, and a few embedded talks. Read all about it after the break.
Continue reading “DEF CON: Tamper Evidence, Contests, And Embedded Talks”
DEF CON: Hacking Hardware And Cars
The first full day of DEF CON was packed with hacking hardware and cars. I got to learn about why your car is less secure than you might think, pick some locks, and found out that there are electronic DEF CON badges after all. Keep reading for all the detail.
Hackaday At DEF CON 21
I’ve arrived at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada for DEF CON 21. Over the next couple of days, I’ll be talking about what I get up to here.
The main event today is registration, which means getting a neat badge. This year’s badge was designed by [Ryan Clarke]. According to the DEF CON booklet, they are “non-electronic-electronic” badges this year, and DEF CON will be alternating between electronic badges every other year.
The playing card design is printed on a PCB, and uses the silkscreen, solder mask, and copper layers to provide three colors for the artwork. The badge is a crypto challenge, featuring some cryptic characters, numbers, and an XOR gate. I don’t have any ideas about it yet, but some people are already working hard on cracking the code.
Tomorrow, I’ll be heading to a few talks including one on hacking cars that we discussed earlier, and one on decapping chips. I’ll also be checking out some of the villages. The Tamper Evident Village is premiering this year, and they’ll be showing off a variety of tamper proofing tech. I’ll also try to get to the Beverage Cooling Contraption Contest, where competitors build devices to cool beverages (ie, beer) as quickly as possible.
If you have any DEF CON tips, let me know in the comments.
Blackhat: IOS Device Charger Exploit Installs And Activates Malware
A team of researchers from Georgia Tech unveiled their findings yesterday at the Blackhat conference. Their topic is a power charger exploit that installs malware on iOS devices. Who would have thought that there’d be a security hole associated with the charging port on a device? Oh wait, after seeing hotel room locks exploited through their power jack this is an avenue that should be examined with all device security.
The demonstration used a charger and an BeagleBoard. Plugging in the charger is not enough to trigger the exploit, the user must unlock the screen while charging for it to go into action. But once that’s done the game is over. Their demo removes the Facebook app and replaces it with an infected impostor while leaving the icon in the same place on your home screen. They notified Apple of their findings and a patch will roll out with iOS7. So when would you plug your device into an untrusted charger? Their research includes a photo from an airport where an iPad is connected to the USB port of a public charging station.
The summary on the Blackhat site has download icons for the white paper and presentation slides. At the time of writing we had a hard time getting them to download but succeeded after several tries.
