[Floor] sent in this PDF [I’ve mirrored it here] describing how to get a game of chess running on a dutch voting machine. (Even better, it describes how to monitor who’s voting for what via RF emissions) They did a thorough job of hacking the daylights out of it and proving the insecurity on these machines. You can get some more details on the web site.
Misc Hacks4181 Articles
Toorcon Anonymous Presentation
I promised that I’d follow up on some Toorcon stuff later this week, so here it is. I believe I was present for the first ever anonymous presentation at a con. I’ve been waiting for the presentation information to get posted on the TOR wiki, and today I finally found it. The presentation is from the TRON: HE FIGHTS FOR THE USER talk. The idea worked out very well. We could hear the presenter quite well the entire time The combination of TOR, VNC, and Ventrillo was unique. We were even able to ask the speaker questions at the end. The talk opens up some very interesting possibilities. Instead of being able to arrest someone before/after a talk, someone could present on a controversial issue with less fear of corporate/government fallout. Check out the wiki page for more information.
C64 Alpha Mod
David Terrill sent in his new c64 project. It’s almost an end-all c64 mod. He lopped off the back half of the case, added s-video, a piggybacked secondary sound chip, 1/4″ audio, stereo input, audio feedback, a serial port, DIN sync… and more. If you dig c64s or hardware bending, check out his write up.
Hackaday Extra
I spent 14 hours at airports today, after staying up all night. My internet access at Toorcon was bandwith starved, so I wanted to catch up a bit. I’ll try to highlight more Toorcon stuff later in the week.
[Clinton] and [bart] both sent in Clinton’s electric shock alarm clock. (Don’t even think about building one of these things, it could kill someone if you’re not careful.)
[capagotks] sent in his USB refitted hand crank LED flashlight.
I got this a few times, so here’s a simple work surface made from an old PC case. (I use self healing cutting mats.)
[Ian] presents us with a bunch of cell phone repair (and upgrade?) information. Let me know if you actually rebuild a broken phone. The most likely scenario would be LCD replacement.
[Jim] sent in these candy(sugar) powered rockets. sweet!
Finally, [Leigh Norton] in Essex (Yes, Essex.) has an HP pen plotter like the one used to make a vinyl cutter. Post if you want it and maybe he’ll give it to you.
Toorcon Day 1
[12am] We hit the opening keynote by Cory Doctorow. He had some interesting things to say about patterns in eula agreements and the restriction of rights to enforce business models.
[Simple Nomad] followed up with his talk called ‘State of the Enemy State’ – his observations regarding government security, just how advanced real time encryption cracking probably is and predictions on some forthcoming laws and how they’ll affect the security industry. The most interesting one: encryption key escrow was enacted a couple weeks ago by Blair in the UK, and it’ll probably come to the US next.
The talk on the apple airport security flaw was canceled, so it was replaced by ‘lightning talks’. Think open mic night on the floor of a security conference. Johnny Cache opened it up with some observations about why the talk was canceled. He had to skirt around the issue to keep from getting in trouble, but he was definitely pissed.
There were a few others, but I’ll leave it there for now.
WT-300 Cluster
[Sprite_tm] sent in his latest project. It’s a cluster built from hacked Acer WT-300 windows CE terminals. The resulting speed wasn’t too impressive (10 200Mhz Geode cpus) but the road to get it done is interesting. He had to whip up a flash programmer to get the device to boot from ide devices. Then he added IDE headers and IDE Cf adapters.
Rebuilding Tube Amps
I’ve been searching for a particular old school hack and ran across this little gem. I don’t know why I’m so intrigued by tube amps.. the high voltage, the glow, the power – oh yeah, never-mind. One of the most expensive parts of a tube amp is the transformer. They scored a pair of mono-block amps and walk us through replacing virtually every part except the transformers. My problem? I need at least 6.
