PS3 Hacking Start-to-finish – CCC

December 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 94 Comments

Well it looks like the Play Station 3 is finally and definitively cracked. FailOverflow’s Chaos Communications Congress talk on console security revealed that, thanks to a flaw on Sony’s part, they were able to acquire the private keys for the PS3. These keys can be used to sign your own code, making it every bit as valid (to the machine anyway) as a disk licensed by the media giant. We’ve embedded the three-part video of the talk, which we watched in its entirety with delight. We especially enjoy their reasoning that Sony brought this upon themselves by pulling OtherOS support.

We remember seeing a talk years back about how the original Xbox security was hacked. We looked and looked but couldn’t dig up the link. If you know what we’re talking about, leave the goods with your comment.

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A Hacker’s Marginal Security Helps Return Stolen Computer

December 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 76 Comments

Gather round and hear the story of how a hacker outsmarts a criminal. [Zoz] was robbed and they got his desktop computer. Gone, right? Nope. Because of a peculiar combination of his computer’s configuration, and the stupidity of the criminal, he got it back. He shares the tale during his Defcon 18 talk (PDF), the video is embedded after the break.

[Zoz’s] first bit of luck came because he had set up the machine to use a dynamic DNS service, updated via a script. Since the criminal didn’t wipe the hard drive he was able to find the machine online. From there he discovered that he could SSH into it, and even use VNC to eavesdrop on the new owner. This, along with a keylogger he installed, got him all the information he needed; the guy’s name, birth date, login and password information for websites, and most importantly his street address. He passed along this juicy data to police and they managed to recover the system.

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Radio Controlled Hard Drive Security

December 7, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 46 Comments

[Samimy] has put together this really neat video tutorial on building a Radio Controlled secure hard drive. How can a hard drive be radio controlled? That’s the first thing we thought too. He has torn apart a remote-controlled car and is using the guts to remotely switch on power to the drive. This means that the drive is only active if you boot the computer after you put the fob in the hidden security system. It looks like it would be fairly effective. We’re curious though, if he is putting the entire drive assembly inside his PC, why rely on batteries for the circuit? Why not pull from the PC power supply? Another neat upgrade might be connecting to an internal USB connection on the motherboard so a reboot isn’t necessary.

Check out the entire video after the break.
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RFID Spoofer With Code And Instructions

November 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Here’s a field-programmable RFID spoofer developed by [Doug Jackson]. He was inspired by the spoofers we looked at near the end of September that didn’t have source code available. With the idea seeded in his mind he figured he could develop his own version, and then decided to share the build details with the rest of us.

The tags that he purchased for testing and developing the spoofer have a code printed on the back of them. A bit of sleuthing at the data from a tag reader and he managed to crack the code. From there he built this tag spoofer with a keypad on which you enter the number from the back of any 125 kHz tag and the device becomes that tag. If you have been waiting to test your RFID hacking skills there should be nothing holding you back now that [Doug] shared the details of his own adventure.

Surprisingly Simple Magnetic Card Spoofer

November 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Craig’s] magnetic card spoofer is both simple and brilliant. There are two parts to spoofing these cards and he took care of both of them. The first part is getting the actual card data. He designed the spoofer board with a header that connects to a card reader for doing this. The second part is the spoofing itself, which is done with an electromagnet. As with past spoofers, he wrapped a shim with enamel-coated magnet wire. An old knife blade was picked for its thickness and ferromagnetism. This magnet is driven by an ATtiny2313 which stores the data, and is protected by a transistor driving the coil. There were a few design flaws in his board, but [Craig] was able to get the same track data out of the spoof as the original card despite the LED being used as a protection diode and an ‘aftermarket’ resistor on the transistor base.

Cheap Audio Equipment Makes ATM Theft Easier

November 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

ATM information theft is nothing new. Neither is the use of skimmers to gain access to the data. But it’s a little surprising just how easy it has become to hack together the devices using audio equipment. The images above are samples of a skimmer for sale from an Eastern-European do-no-good. It is the magnetic stripe sniffer portion of the attack which captures card data as an audio recording. That is later turned into the binary code that was read from the card. We’re just speculating, but that looks an awful lot like the PCB from a pen recorder, something you can pick up for just a couple of bucks.

Of course this is used in conjunction with a camera to capture PIN data as the second part of the security protocol, but it really underscores the need for new ATM technology. Some skimmers don’t even require retrieval of the hardware, and you never know where the sketchy machines might pop up next.

[via Engadget and Slashdot]

Hopefully Detect Trolls Before They Devour You

November 25, 2010 by Joseph Thibodeau 24 Comments

In the cold and mysterious wilderness of Norway, it pays to be ready for anything–especially heavy-walking trolls. The team at [nullohm] decided to prepare thoroughly for their trek into the woods to witness the Leonids meteor shower by putting together an Arduino-based “troll detector”.

The device is based on the superstition of hammering a steel spike into a tree to keep trolls away from camp. This goes one step further by including an accelerometer and LED indicators so that you can tell exactly what type of troll is just about to feast upon your tender human flesh.

When the detector is installed into a nearby tree, it takes an average seismic measurement and then looks for telltale footfalls. Even if you’re not concerned with perpetuating superstitions, you might find a use for the source code for simple seismic activity monitoring at home to supplement your miniature seismic reflector.