Ronja (Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access) is a free technology project. It uses LEDs to create a 10Mbps optical communication link at distances of up to 1.4km. The system was developed using open source tools and the designs are fully disclosed. Everything you need is on the site: schematics, 3D models, and diagrams. The original systems used visible light, but the current designs use infrared. The parts for building one of these units should cost around $60. It’ll probably take at least seventy man hours to put one together so you’d have to be pretty dedicated to not using commodity wi-fi equipment to go through with this.

Continue reading “Ronja Optical Data Link” →

There’s a couple great WEP cracking walkthroughs that have appeared recently.  The first is included in the From the Shadows Box 3.0 episode. Humphrey Cheung, who wrote the WEP cracking article we covered earlier, explains how the process works and gives a demo of it in action. The camera work is shaky and out of focus so you should check out the Whoppix WEP Cracking Demo over at Hacking Defined. The demo is a little less verbose, but the command line commands and results are a lot clearer. I also had no idea what was so great about Unionfs till I saw this video. I hope you guys have a fun weekend with this info; I am still waiting for some antenna parts unfortunately.

[thanks jE]

Continue reading “WEP Cracking Illustrated” →

I’m banking that these are probably the next things added to jackets

I was mildly interested in the serial port mods (add a gps, lcd, serial console), but this is just awesome. Now you can add as much Secure Digital flash storage as you want to your WRT54G. This requires soldering six wires plus a custom driver. The added space could come in really useful for storing logs or large dump files from kismet. You could just plug the thing into the wall and let it sniff packets all day. It could also be a small file server running bittorrent while you’re out of the house with your laptop. Most important of all: SD support means you’ll be able to share memory cards with your Playstation 3 and that’s a top priority right?

[thanks darkpadden via LinksysInfo.org]

Continue reading “WRT SD Card Mod” →

the linksys wrt54g has been the target of many hacks taking it far beyond its original intended mode of operation; now going so far as becoming a personal telephone company. David DeLauro has set up an asterisk pbx system on top of the the openwrt firmware package. asterisk is a fully featured pbx system. in theory this set up could allow you to wire your whole house through one voip connection. you can even script the dialing sequence so that certain prefixes are handled by different carriers. the router has limited storage space, but you could probably use the voicemail features by mounting network storage. with enough ingenuity you should be able to pipe all of your communications and entertainment over ethernet.

Continue reading “Asterisk Pbx On Wrt54g” →

A stompbox? What’s that, a guitar pedal? No silly, it’s a WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network) box that picks up data from cellular towers then redistributes it so that you can use it in whichever way you please. A good example is if you had one in a car, you could trace the car and whether it’s moving and track where it’s headed. Making one requires a few parts and some manual labor working and testing, but it pays off. You can now use Google Maps’ Satellite Viewing to track things. It’s got so much potential to be used in good and bad ways.

Continue reading “EVDO Stompbox Project” →

after having problems with my old dsl router, i finally ordered and received the actiontec gt701-wg from qwest.  i believe this is what they are starting to distribute by default in my area, and i wouldn’t be surprised if these were to be found elsewhere as well.

the interesting thing about these new actiontec routers is that they run linux.  seatllewireless has a nice page describing the system, and people have already figured out how to build and install custom firmware on the device.

most people have a single static ip, so it would be sort of neat to have your dsl router run a small static web site.  you could always port forward, but it’s one less machine to worry about.  better yet, install ssh and use it as a tunneling server.  then you can open up your wireless network for your neighbors, but not broadcast your email in the clear.

have you done anything neat with your 701 or a different embedded linux router?  do you have any great ideas for what could be done with this system?  tell us about it in the comments area.