Emulate A Paper Tape, To Be Life And Soul Of The Cyphercon Party

April 28, 2019 by Jenny List No comments

The recent Cyphercon badge featured a very clever integrated paper tape reader, and had the hidden feature of a party mode in which all its lights would flash. When [Gigawatts] discovered this after the conference had ended, it was too late to find the tape to activate it. The solution? Build a tape emulator with a microcontroller hooked into the badge’s tape sensors to send the data directly into it.

It was a Tweet from [AND!XOR] that revealed the flashing hidden mode, and in case you missed it you can find all about the amazing badge in our review. The emulator takes a TI Stellaris LaunchPad LM4F120 and a set of jumper wires soldered directly to the jumper wires on the badge’s reverse. Hex values are created from a tape through an in-browser HTML page with a checkbox interface, a sketch converts the hex to tape, and the badge runs the code. The GitHub readme includes a description of the paper tape format as well as some sample tapes including a badge reset one for when you tire of party mode.

Most of us weren’t lucky enough to make it to Cyphercon and receive a badge. But we’re still impressed by the ingenuity of the badge’s designer, and by the complexity of the CTF game of which it formed a part.

What’s The Secret Of Cyphercon?

April 21, 2019 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Cyphercon is not particularly large, or in a glamorous part of the world — in fact most people who came in from out of town had to fight snow to make it. Yet when I stepped into the con last Thursday there was no doubt something awesome was in progress. People were camped out in small groups, working furiously on their computers, talks were packed with people who came alive in the Q&A, and everywhere you looked you found people deep in conversation with friends old and new. If you missed out on Cyphercon 4.0, you need to make an effort to be here for 5.0.

Join me after the break for the highlights of this two-day security conference nestled in the heart of Milwaukee.

Continue reading “What’s The Secret Of Cyphercon?” →

Next Week Is KiCon: Come For The Talks, Stay For The Parties

April 17, 2019 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

KiCad is the electronic design automation software that lives at the intersection of electronic design and open source software. It’s seen a huge push in development over the last few years which has grown the suite into a mountain of powerful tools. To help better navigate that mountain, the first ever KiCad conference, KiCon, is happening next week in Chicago and Hackaday is hosting one of the afterparties.

The two days of talks take place on April 26th and 27th covering a multitude of topics. KiCad’s project leader, Wayne Stambaugh, will discuss the state of the development effort. You’ll find talks on best practices for using the software as an individual and as a team, how to avoid common mistakes, and when you should actually try to use the auto-router. You can learn about automating your design process with programs that generate footprints, by connecting it through git, and through alternate user interfaces. KiCad has 3D modeling to make sure your boards will fit their intended enclosures and talks will cover generating models in FreeCAD and rendering designs in both Fusion360 and Blender. Dust off your dark arts with RF and microwave design tips as well as simulating KiCad circuits in SPICE. If you can do it in KiCad, you’ll learn about it at KiCon.

Of course there’s a ton of fun to be had as interesting hackers from all over the world come together in the Windy City. Hackaday’s own Anool Mahidharia and Kerry Scharfglass will be presenting talks, and Mike Szczys will be in the audience. We anticipate an excellent “lobby con” where the conversations away from the stages are as interesting as the formal talks. And of course there are afterparties!

Friday 4/26 Pumping Station: One, the popular Chicago hackerspace now celebrating its 10 year anniversary, is hosting an afterparty (details TBA)
Saturday 4/27: Hackaday is hosting an after party at Jefferson Tap from 6-8:30. We’re providing beverages and light food for all who attended the conference.

If you still don’t have a ticket to KiCon, you better get one right now. We’re told that you can count what’s left on two hands. Supplyframe (Hackaday’s parent company) is a sponsor of KiCon, and we have two extra tickets that came with that sponsorship. We like seeing a diverse community at these events and have saved these tickets for people from under-represented groups (such as for example women, LGBT+, and people of color) in the hardware world. Email us directly for the tickets, your information will remain confidential.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone next week!

Cyphercon Badge Has A Paper Tape Reader Built In

April 12, 2019 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

Cyphercon 4.0 came to life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Thursday and the conference badge is a brilliant and engaging design. At first glance it looks like a fairly mundane rectangular badge. But a closer look reveals simplistic elegance wrapping around some clever mechanical design and the awesome interactive mechanism of being able to read paper tape.

That’s right, this badge can read the series of holes punched in the long paper strips you normally associate with old iron of 50 years ago.

Continue reading “Cyphercon Badge Has A Paper Tape Reader Built In” →

The 3D Printing Dream Is Still Alive At 2019’s Midwest RepRap Festival

April 8, 2019 by Sonya Vasquez 8 Comments

3D Printers have been in the hands of hackers for well over ten years, but the dream is far from over and certainly not overslept. This year’s Midwest RepRap Festival is a testament to the still-growing excitement, and world where 3D printing is alive and kicking on the next level.

This past weekend, I took up my friend [Eric’s] advice to come down and participate firsthand, and I was simply blown away. Not only did we witness the largest number of attendees to date, MRRF 2019 spilled into not one but two conference halls at the Goshen Fairgrounds.

In what follows, I tell my tale of the times. Continue reading “The 3D Printing Dream Is Still Alive At 2019’s Midwest RepRap Festival” →

This Week: Cyphercon 4.0

April 6, 2019 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Dust off your rainbow tables and grab a burner laptop, this Thursday, April 11, Cyphercon 4.0 roars into Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s a security conference with all that entails, but there is a bit of emphasis on crypto. A founding principle of Cyphercon is to support a “free and open discussion on strong cryptography”.

You’ll find 10 community submitted puzzles to get warmed up for solving clever challenges. There’s a wireless capture-the-flag challenge to boost your wireless sniffing/spoofing skills using simple tools like Raspberry Pi and the YARD stick One (which we just saw doing keyless entry attacks). As you’d expect, a wide range of talks from well know security professionals has been planned.

There’s a few talks I’m particularly interested in seeing. Vi Grey’s talk on NES ROM polyglots is a can’t miss for me even though I’ve I’ve read about his work at length. Oh, and you know all those 23andMe DNA tests? Michelle Meas has a talk about what happens when genome databases from companies like that get breached. Eric Escobar isn’t just running the wireless CTF, but giving a talk along with Matt Orme on hardware for remote wireless pen testing. And I’m a sucker for talks from legal experts so Amit Elazari Bar On’s presentation on legal issue with bug bounty programs is very high on my list.

But these are just the things that are formally planned at the conference. I missed out on last year’s Cyphercon and heard the badge hacking challenges were on-point. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can come up with this time around! I’ll report back on what I encounter… I’m hoping to run into you there!

Cambridge Mini Uncon: Robots, Light Boxes, PCB Watches, And Retro Computers

April 5, 2019 by Jenny List 9 Comments

At Hackaday, we are nothing without our community. We meet up at conferences, shows, and camps, but one of our favourite way to congregate is with the Unconference format. It’s an event where you can stand up and give an eight-minute talk about what is important to you, and what you are working on.

Thank you to the Cambridge Makespace for hosting our most recent a Mini Unconference. Let’s take a look at the excellent talks and demos that highlighted the day!

Continue reading “Cambridge Mini Uncon: Robots, Light Boxes, PCB Watches, And Retro Computers” →