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71 Articles

Spiral Laser Cut Buttons Make A Super-Slim USB MIDI Board

January 29, 2018 by 15 Comments

We see a huge variety of human-computer interface devices here at Hackaday, and among them are some exceptionally elegant designs. Of those that use key switches though, the vast majority employ off the shelf components made for commercial keyboards or similar. It makes sense to do this, there are some extremely high quality ones to be had.

Sometimes though we are shown designs that go all the way in creating their key switches from the ground up. Such an example comes from [Brandon Rice], and it a particularly clever button design because of its use of laser cutting to achieve a super-slim result. He’s made a sandwich of plywood with the key mechanisms formed in a spiral cut on the top layer. He’s a little sketchy on the exact details of the next layer, but underneath appears to be a plywood spacer surrounding a silicone membrane with conductive rubber taken from a commercial keyboard. Beneath that is copper tape on the bottom layer cut to an interweaving finger design for the contacts. An Adafruit Trinket Pro provides the brains and a USB interface, and the whole device makes for an attractive and professional looking peripheral.

You can see the results in action as he’s posted a video, which we’ve included below the break.

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This USB Drive Will Self-Destruct After Ruining Your Computer

January 19, 2018 by 35 Comments

Who would have thought that you could light up pyrotechnics on USB power? This USB keystroke injector that blows up after it’s used proves the concept.

Fully aware that this is one of those “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” projects, [MG] takes pains to point out that his danger dongle is just for dramatic effect, like a prop for a movie or the stage. In fact, he purposely withholds details on the pyrotechnics and concentrates on the keystroke injection aspect, potentially nasty enough by itself, as well as the dongle’s universal payload launching features. We’re a little bummed, because the confetti explosion (spoiler!) was pretty neat.

The device is just an ATtiny85 and a few passives stuffed into an old USB drive shell, along with a MOSFET to trigger the payload. If you eschew the explosives, the payload could be anything that will fit in the case. [MG] suggests that if you want to prank someone, an obnoxious siren might be a better way to teach your mark a lesson about plugging in strange USB drives.

While this isn’t the most dangerous thing you can do with a USB port, it could be right up there with that rash of USB killer dongles from a year or so ago. All of these devices are fun “what ifs”, but using them on anything but your own computers is not cool and possibly dangerous. Watching the smoke pour out of a USB socket definitely drives home the point that you shouldn’t plug in that thumbdrive that you found in the bathroom at work, though.

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Save Your Thumbs With This Netflix Password Sender

August 29, 2017 by 22 Comments

Chances are anyone who has an entry-level to mid-range smart TV knows that setting them up with your streaming account credentials is a royal pain. Akin to the days of texting on a flip phone, using the number pad or arrow keys to compose your user name and password seems to take forever.  So why not avoid the issue with this automated Netflix logger-inner?

As if the initial setup wasn’t bad enough, when [krucho5]’s LG smart TV started asking for his Netflix credentials every few days, he knew something needed to be done. An Arduino to send “keystrokes” was the obvious solution, but when initial attempts to spoof the HID on the set proved fruitless, [krucho5] turned to the IR remote interface. He used an IR receiver module to capture the codes sent while entering user name and password, and an IR LED plays it back anytime the TV ask for it. The video below shows how much easier it is now, and the method should work just fine for any other online service accounts.

We like [krucho5]’s build, but the fit and finish are a little rough. Perhaps slipping them into a pair of Netflix-enabled socks would be a nice touch?

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MalDuino — Open Source BadUSB

January 24, 2017 by 28 Comments

MalDuino is an Arduino-powered USB device which emulates a keyboard and has keystroke injection capabilities. It’s still in crowdfunding stage, but has already been fully backed, so we anticipate full production soon. In essence, it implements BadUSB attacks much like the widely known, having appeared on Mr. Robot, USB Rubber Ducky.

It’s like an advanced version of HID tricks to drop malicious files which we previously reported. Once plugged in, MalDuino acts as a keyboard, executing previous configured key sequences at very fast speeds. This is mostly used by IT security professionals to hack into local computers, just by plugging in the unsuspicious USB ‘Pen’.

[Seytonic], the maker of MalDuino, says its objective is it to be a cheaper, fully open source alternative with the big advantage that it can be programmed straight from the Arduino IDE. It’s based on ATmega32u4 like the Arduino Leonardo and will come in two flavors, Lite and Elite. The Lite is quite small and it will fit into almost any generic USB case. There is a single switch used to enable/disable the device for programming.

The Elite version is where it gets exciting. In addition to the MicroSD slot that will be used to store scripts, there is an onboard set of dip switches that can be used to select the script to run. Since the whole platform is open sourced and based on Arduino, the MicroSD slot and dip switches are entirely modular, nothing is hardcoded, you can use them for whatever you want. The most skilled wielders of BadUSB attacks have shown feats like setting up a fake wired network connection that allows all web traffic to be siphoned off to an outside server. This should be possible with the microcontroller used here although not native to the MalDuino’s default firmware.

For most users, typical feature hacks might include repurposing the dip switches to modify the settings for a particular script. Instead of storing just scripts on the MicroSD card you could store word lists on it for use in password cracking. It will be interesting to see what people will come up with and the scripts they create since there is a lot of space to tinker and enhanced it. That’s the greatness of open source.

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Custom Gaming Keypad Developed With PSoC And Fusion 360

September 15, 2016 by 8 Comments

There was a time when building something yourself probably meant it didn’t look very much like a commercial product. That’s not always a bad thing. We’ve seen many custom builds that are nearly works of art. We’ve also seen plenty of builds that are–ahem–let’s say were “hacker chic”.

[AlexanderBrevig] decided to take on a project using a PSoC development board he picked up. In particular, he wanted to build a custom game keypad. He prototyped a number of switches with the board and got the firmware working so that the device looks like a USB HID keyboard.

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Analyzing The Microsoft Surface Touch Keyboard Cover

August 15, 2015 by 17 Comments

The Microsoft Surface is an awesome Tablet PC, but it has one problem: there is just one USB port on it. There is an additional port, though: a connector for the Surface Touch Keyboard connector. That’s what [Edward Shin] is looking into, with the long-term intention of creating an adapter that allows him to connect a Thinkpad keyboard to this proprietary connector. His initial work identified the connector as using Microsoft’s own HID over I2C protocol, which sends the standard USB HID protocol over an I2C connection. So far so good, but it seems to get a little odd after that, with a serial connection running at nearly 1 Mbps and sending 9 bits per transfer with 1 stop bit. Presumably this is because Microsoft had planned to release other devices that used this connector, but this hasn’t panned out so far.

Anybody want to help him out? He has posted some captured data from the connection for analysis, and is looking for assistance. We hope he manages to build his converter: a Microsoft Surface with a decent keyboard and an open USB port would be a great portable setup. Bonus: for those teardown fans among you, he has done a great teardown of a Touch Cover keyboard that reveals some interesting stuff, including a lot of well-labelled test points.

Via [Reddit]

KeyMouSerial Solves Your Raspberry Pi Keyboard Problems

June 27, 2015 by 36 Comments

All laptops have a working keyboard and mouse built into them, the only problem is that you can’t use these tools on other computers that don’t have them. At least, until now. [Peter] has created the KeyMouSerial in order to use his laptop’s keyboard and mouse as physical devices on his Raspberry Pi, finally freeing the bonds holding our laptops’ human interface devices back.

The software for KeyMouSerial copies keystroke and mouse information and sends this out via a serial port on his laptop (using a USB to serial adapter). From there the information is translated by an Arduino into HID commands which are sent via USB to the target computer, in this case a Raspberry Pi. It’s a pretty elegant solution to carrying a bulky keyboard and mouse along just for a Raspberry Pi, or for any computer that might not have access to a network and SSH.

[Peter] has also been working on using his iPod as a serial-to-USB converter, so if you’re a Rockbox developer and want to help out then drop him a line. All of the software is available (for Windows, Mac, or Linux) including the Arduino sketch if you want to try this software out for yourself. And, if you don’t want to turn a computer into a keyboard and want to go the other direction and turn a keyboard into a computer, that is also an option.