This Week In Security: Insecure Chargers, Request Forgeries, And Kernel Security

August 6, 2021 by Jonathan Bennett 13 Comments

The folks at Pen Test Partners decided to take a look at electric vehicle chargers. Many of these chargers are WiFi-connected, and let you check your vehicle’s charge state via the cloud. How well are they secured? Predictably, not as well as they could be.

The worst of the devices tested, Project EV, didn’t actually have any user authentication on the server side API. Knowing the serial number was enough to access the account and control the device. The serial numbers are predictable, so taking over every Project EV charger connected to the internet would have been trivial. On top of that, arbitrary firmware could be loaded remotely onto the hardware was possible, representing a real potential problem.

The EVBox platform had a different problem, where an authenticated user could simply specify a security role. The tenantadmin role was of particular interest here, working as a superadmin that could see and manage multiple accounts. This flaw was patched within an impressive 24 hours. The ~~EVBox charger~~, as well as several other devices they checked had fundamental security weaknesses due to their use of Raspberry Pi hardware in the product. Edit: The EVBox was *not* one of the devices using the Pi in the end product.

Wait, What About the Raspberry Pi?

Apparently the opinion that a Raspberry Pi didn’t belong in IoT hardware caught Pen Test Partners some flack, because a few days later they published a follow-up post explaining their rationale. To put it simply, the Pi can’t do secure boot, and it can’t do encrypted storage. Several of the flaws they found in the chargers mentioned above were discovered because the device filesystems were wide open for inspection. A processor that can handle device encryption, ideally better than the TPM and Windows Bitlocker combination we covered last week, gives some real security against such an attack. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Insecure Chargers, Request Forgeries, And Kernel Security” →

Magnus-Effect RC Aircraft Is A Lot Harder Than It Looks

August 5, 2021 by Danie Conradie 13 Comments

Conventional airfoil wings have come out on top for getting flying machines airborne over the last century, but there were a few other interesting designs that have come and gone. One of these is the Magnus effect plane, which makes use of the lift produced by a spinning cylinder. [James Whomsley] from [Project Air] decided to build one as a side project, but it ended up being a lot more challenging than what he initially suspected. (Video, embedded below.)

The Magnus effect achieved a bit of viral fame a few years when [How Ridiculous] dropped a basketball down a dam wall with some backspin. [James] T-shaped Magnus effect plane has a pair of spinning cylinders at the top to create lift, driven by a brushless motor using a belt. A second brushless motor with a propeller is on the center carbon fiber tube provides forward thrust, and a rudder provides yaw control. The battery is attached to the bottom of the tub for stability.

The very first flight looked very promising, but [James] quickly ran into a series of problems related to center of gravity, power, pitch control, and drag. After iterations of the build-crash-rebuild cycle, he ended up with larger motors and rudder, shorter “wings”, and a higher thrust motor position. This resulted in a craft still only marginally controllable, but stayed in the air for quite a while. Since the intention was never to turn it into a long-term project, James] called it a success to avoid more yak shaving, and continue work on his airboat and rocketplane.

If you are interested in building one of your own, he put all the findings of his experimentation in a short report. For more inspiration, check out the other Magnus effect plane we covered that used KFC buckets for the wings.

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Vintage Computer Festival West Is This Weekend

August 5, 2021 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

This weekend is the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF) West, which will be held in-person at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Here is the complete schedule of events.

If you’re in the area, go get your retrocomputing on at this two-day event that Hackaday are proud to sponsor. Who knows? You may end up hobnobbing with original system developers who are finally at liberty to spill the tea about the old days.

Case in point: Hackaday’s own Bil Herd will be there virtually to talk about the new Commodore inside history book he wrote with Margaret Moribito. Other speakers include Bob Purvy, who will discuss his novel about the Xerox Star. This isn’t your average history book — it uses fictional characters to play out actual events. Another talk delves into the history of computerized tic-tac-toe, and yet another will cover recovering lost floppy disks with an oscilloscope. Finally, Liza Loop will speak about the history of computing in education to close out the weekend’s talks.

There are also plenty of exhibitions on the schedule, too, including Rare Computers from Japan and Analog Computing in the 1960s. And don’t forget, you’re at the Computer History Museum, so there should never be anything approaching a dull moment. Have fun!

Murata To Deliver Solid State Batteries To Market In The Fall

August 3, 2021 by Lewin Day 43 Comments

Solid state batteries have long been promised to us as the solution to our energy storage needs. Theoretically capable of greater storage densities than existing lithium-ion and lithium-polymer cells, while being far safer to boot, they would offer a huge performance boost in all manner of applications.

For those of us dreaming of a 1,000-mile range electric car or a 14-kilowatt power drill, the simple fact remains that the technology just isn’t quite there yet. However, Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. has just announced that it plans to ship solid state batteries in the fall, which from a glance at the calendar is just weeks away.

It’s exciting news, and we’re sure you’re dying to know – just what are they planning to ship, and how capable are the batteries? Let’s dive in.

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Build That Catan Board You Designed

July 30, 2021 by Rich Hawkes 5 Comments

A couple of months ago, we posted about the one day design [Sam March] did of an electronic Settlers of Catan board. Now he’s released a video with the second half. His first video was about the design of the game, specifically the electronic components. In this video, [Sam] takes us through the physical build of the board.

A couple of visits to his local maker space allows him to cut both the wooden parts of the board, as well as the acrylic hexes that go on top of each piece. Even with a CNC machine, there’s still some clean-up that needs to be done. After cleaning up the edges of the wood with a chisel and staining it, it’s time to put the circuit boards in, wire them up and program them. The build includes a dice roller – pushing a button shows the number rolled by lighting up the tiles in the form of the rolled number. The final touch is having some friends over to actually play the game.

Between the design process in the last article and the build process in this one, we get a good look at the way [Sam] designs things from beginning to finished product. Take a look at our previous article on [Sam]’s design as well as some other Catan articles.

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This Week In Security: Fail2RCE, TPM Sniffing, Fishy Leaks, And Decompiling

July 30, 2021 by Jonathan Bennett 10 Comments

Fail2ban is a great tool for dynamically blocking IP addresses that show bad behavior, like making repeated login attempts. It was just announced that a vulnerability could allow an attacker to take over a machine by being blocked by Fail2ban. The problem is in the mail-whois action, where an email is sent to the administrator containing the whois information. Whois information is potentially attacker controlled data, and Fail2ban doesn’t properly sterilize the input before piping it into the mail binary. Mailutils has a feature that uses the tilde key as an escape sequence, allowing commands to be run while composing a message. Fail2ban doesn’t sanitize those tilde commands, so malicious whois data can trivially run commands on the system. Whois is one of the old-school unix protocols that runs in the clear, so a MItM attack makes this particularly easy. If you use Fail2ban, make sure to update to 0.10.7 or 0.11.3, or purge any use of mail-whois from your active configs. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Fail2RCE, TPM Sniffing, Fishy Leaks, And Decompiling” →

Orbiter Is Now Open Source

July 29, 2021 by Al Williams 30 Comments

We always have it on our list to learn more about Orbiter. If you haven’t seen it, it is a hyperrealistic space simulator. Granted, you can put it in an easy mode, but its real strength is you can very accurately model spacecraft like the Space Shuttle and have very realistic controls. In order to spur development, the program is now open source.

We think this is interesting for two reasons. First, if you ever wanted to contribute into a project of this scope, here’s your chance. You might not want to write a full-blow space simulator but you might have something to add. However, open source also means you can see how the program works and either reuse it in your own open source projects or just simply learn from the techniques.

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