Misc Hacks

4032 Articles

Polymorphic String Encryption Gives Code Hackers Bad Conniptions

July 27, 2020 by 26 Comments

When it comes to cyber security, there’s nothing worse than storing important secret data in plaintext. With even the greenest malicious actors more than capable of loading up a hex editor or decompiler, code can quickly be compromised when proper precautions aren’t taken in the earliest stages of development. To help avoid this, encryption can be used to hide sensitive data from prying eyes. While a simple xor used to be a quick and dirty way to do this, for something really sophisticated, polymorphic encryption is a much better way to go.

A helpful tool to achieve this is StringEncrypt by [PELock]. An extension for Visual Studio Code, it’s capable of encrypting strings and data files in over 10 languages. Using polymorphic encryption techniques, the algorithm used is unique every time, along with the encryption keys themselves. This makes it far more difficult for those reverse engineering a program to decrypt important strings or data.

While the free demo is limited in scope, the price for the full version is quite reasonable, and we expect many out there could find it a useful addition to their development toolkit. We’ve discussed similar techniques before, often used to make harder-to-detect malware.

[Thanks to Dawid for the tip!]

Mechanical Seven-Segment Display Really Sticks Out From The Pack

July 27, 2020 by 20 Comments

We’ve been displaying numbers using segmented displays for almost 120 years now, an invention that predates the LEDs that usually power the ubiquitous devices by a half-dozen decades or so. But LEDs are far from the only way to run a seven-segment display — check out this mechanical seven-segment display for proof of that.

We’ve been seeing a lot of mechanical seven-segment displays lately, and when we first spotted [indoorgeek]’s build, we thought it would be a variation on the common “flip-dot” mechanism. But this one is different; to form each numeral, the necessary segments protrude from the face of the display slightly. Everything is 3D-printed from white filament, yielding a clean look when the retracted but casting a sharp shadow when extended. Each segment carries a small magnet on the back which snuggles up against the steel core of a custom-wound electromagnet, which repels the magnet when energized and extends the segment. We thought for sure it would be loud, but the video below shows that it’s really quiet.

While we like the subtle contrast of the display, it might not be enough for some users, especially where side-lighting is impractical. In that case, they might want to look at this earlier similar display and try contrasting colors on the sides of each segment.

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Tiny Circuit Sculpture Keeps The Night Watch

July 27, 2020 by 8 Comments

If you’re planning to get into circuit sculpture one of these days, it would probably be best to start with something small and simple, instead of trying to make a crazy light-up spaceship or something with a lot of curves on the first go. A small form factor doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t also be useful. Why not start by making a small automatic night light?

The circuit itself is quite simple, especially because it uses an Arduino. You could accomplish the same thing with a 555, but that’s going to complicate the circuit sculpture part of things a bit. As long as the ambient light level coming in from the light-dependent resistor is low enough, then the two LEDs will be lit.

We love the frosted acrylic panels that [akshar1101] connected together with what looks like right angle header pins. If you wanted to expose the electronics, localize the light diffusion with a little acrylic cover that slips over the LEDs. Check it out in the demo after the break.

There’s more than one way to build a glowing cuboid night light. The Rubik’s way, for instance.

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Ergo Keyboard Build Issue Becomes Crystal Clear

July 23, 2020 by 4 Comments

Somewhere between the onset of annoying hand pain and the feeling of worn-out, mushy switches, [sinbeard]’s keyboard dissatisfaction came to a head. He decided it was time to slip into something bit more ergonomic and settled on building an Iris — a small split keeb with an ortholinear (non-staggered) key arrangement.

The Iris is open source and uses an on-board controller, so you can have the boards fabbed and do a lot of SMD soldering, or get a pair of PCBs with all of that already done. [sinbeard] went the latter route with this build, but there’s still plenty of soldering and assembly to do before it’s time to start clackin’, such as the TRRS jacks, the rotary encoders, and of course, all the switches. It’s a great way for people to get their feet wet when it comes to building keyboards.

Everything went according to plan until it was time to flash the firmware and it didn’t respond. It’s worth noting that both of the Iris PCBs are the same, and both are fully populated. This is both good and bad.

It’s bad you have two on-board microcontrollers and their crystals to worry about instead of one. It’s good because there’s a USB port on both sides so you can plug in whichever side you prefer, and this comes in mighty handy if you have to troubleshoot.

When one side’s underglow lit up but not the other, [sinbeard] busted out the ISP programmer. But in the end, he found the problem — a dent in the crystal — by staring at the board. A cheap replacement part and a little hot air rework action was all it took to get this Iris to bloom.

Want to build a keyboard but need a few more keys? Check out the dactyl and the ErgoDox.

Flipping A Coin 10,000 Times With A Dedicated Machine

July 21, 2020 by 32 Comments

Flipping a coin is often the initial example used to help teach probability and statistics to maths students. Often, there is talk of how, given a fair coin, the probability of landing heads or tails should approach 0.5. Of course, if you want to test this, it pays to have a machine do the hard work for you. [Andrew Consroe] has the rig to do just that.

The build consists largely of 3D printed parts. A large cylindrical shroud is used to keep the coin within the flipping area. A spring-loaded dowel is actuated by a stepper motor spinning a cam, which flips the coin. Once the coin has landed, it is photographed with a webcam. An image processing pipeline then determines whether the coin landed heads or tails. A black spot is used on one side of the coin to aid analysis, as the poor-quality webcam images weren’t good enough to recognise the coin in its standard form. Once the flip has been analysed, a sliding aperture is used to push the coin back towards the flipper for the next cycle.

The machine completes a flip approximately every two seconds, meaning 10,000 flips would take approximately 2.5 days. Unfortunately, due to noise and occasional coin escapes, [Andrew] hasn’t yet been able to achieve his goal. He aims to increase speed significantly before making an all-out attempt.

Coin flips can make for decent random numbers, but if you need better ones, perhaps NIST can help you out. Video after the break.

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Clacker Hacker: Hot Rod Switch Mods

July 20, 2020 by 18 Comments

Whether you’re a programmer, gamer, writer, or data entry specialist, the keyboard is an extension of your nervous system. It’s not so much a tool as it is a medium for flow — for being in the zone. So I think it’s only natural that you should care deeply about your keyboard — how it looks, how it sounds, and above all, how it feels to finger-punch those helmeted little switches all the live-long day. That’s my excuse, anyway.

It might surprise you that mechanical keyboard switches can be modified in a number of ways. Depending on what you want from your keyboarding experience, you can make switches feel lighter or less scratchy, quiet them down, or tighten up any wobble in the housing. Why would you want to do this? Because customization is fun. Because electromechanical things are awesome, and because it’s fun to take switches apart and put them back together again. Because it’s literally hacking and this is Hackaday.

This is a pair of plates from a macro keeb I’m making that will sit directly in front of my trackball.

I got into switch modding because I wanted to put Cherry clears in my dactyl, but worried that they would take too much force to actuate and wear my fingers out. So I bought some really light (39g) springs and was really looking forward to swapping them into the clears, but they just don’t work. Like, physically. Slider goes down, slider gets stuck. It will come back up, but only if I hit it again and smear my finger to the side a bit at the same time. Those springs must be too weak to return clear sliders.

I took this as a sign that I should suck it up and use browns instead. After all, no one else has to know what my sliders look like. While I was opening switches, I tried out one of these super-light springs in a brown, thinking maybe they wouldn’t have to go to waste. Not only did the lighter spring work in the brown, it felt pretty nice. It’s hard to imagine how a whole keeb would feel based on a single switch, but if you can gather a handful and snap them into a plate to riffle your fingers over them, well, it’s probably close enough to a full keyboard to get a good feel for whatever mod you’re doing.

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