Brute Force BIOS Hacking Using The Arduino

November 16, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 37 Comments

This clever hack uses an Arduino to do a brute force attack on a computer’s BIOS. In theory, this technique could be used for other programs, but it’s use would be limited since there’s no way to account for too many wrong passwords.

The Arduino generates and outputs the possible password emulating a USB keyboard. When this is done, the pixel in the middle of the screen is read. This is done by reading the analog red signal synced up with the corresponding horizontal and vertical pulses. As with any hack, there were some programming issues that had to be overcome (including one that locked up the keyboard emulator), but this was resolved, and the code is available if you wan to build your own.

Hardware for this build is simple, involving a LCD output, a button to stop everything, and a couple diodes to get the USB keyboard working correctly. This hack turned out quite nicely, and the code and schematics are included!

USB And PS/2 Key Loggers And Mess With Your Grammar

November 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[Irongeek] is up to his old tricks once again with this new key logger prototype. It’s in the early stages, as attested by the breadboard built circuit, but [Adrian] still gives us a demo video after the break showing where he’s at right now. It comes in two flavors, the USB pass through seen above, or another that still connects to the computer via USB but functions with a PS/2 keyboard.

Aside from the obvious issue of a key logger stealing everything you type, there’s some prank value in this device too. The Teensy has more than enough processing power to watch what you typing and make changes as it goes. He shows off blatant rewrites, like changing “has” to “haz” or “you” to “U”. We think it would be better to change things like “they’re” to “their” or “it’s” to “its”. These would be very difficult to see happening and if you added randomness to how often the replacements occur, your victim would sooner come to the conclusion that they’re going crazy than that they’re the target of a little hazing. In fact, that’s probably the reason for our own grammar errors though the years; blast!

Continue reading “USB And PS/2 Key Loggers And Mess With Your Grammar” →

Adding A Compact Flash Reader To A Korg Triton

October 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

[Roberto Barrios] has a Korg Triton sampling keyboard which he enjoys very much, but has grown tired of using media of yesteryear to store his work. He had the option of floppy disk or Jazz drive and for a time he was using a floppy-to-USB emulator, but the keyboard still insisted on a 1.44 Mb storage limit using that method. He decided to crack open the case and add his own CF reader.

It should be noted that this hack could have been avoided by using the 25-pin connector on the back of the keyboard. He didn’t want to have external hardware, which is understandable if you’re gigging–it’s just more equipment to keep track of. His solution uses the floppy disk drive opening to mount the card reader. His electrical connections are made with a ribbon cable. He cut off one end, and soldered the individual wires to the contacts on the motherboard. The reader is seen as a SCSI drive by the Korg firmware thanks to a SCSI-to-IDE adapter, so the storage limitation is based quite fittingly on the size of the CF card used.

Look at that cable management. You’d think it came straight from the factory like this!

A Wooden Computer Case, Monitor Stand, And Keyboard

October 20, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 25 Comments

Wood and electronics don’t generally mix nowadays, but if you yearn back to a time when radios and the like had a nice wooden finish, this wooden computer case may be for you. Combine that with a Wooden keyboard enclosure, and maybe even a LCD monitor stand and you’ll have a setup that should fit in with any wood-themed decor!

The wooden computer case is actually more of a cover in that it uses most of the stock case to house all of the components. It would definitely be a pain, and possibly a fire-hazard, to make a back mounting plate for all the components out of wood. To go along with this, the LCD monitor stand was engineered for a 21″ monitor when the owner of it wasn’t satisfied with the stability of the stock stand. In the end, he ended up building something quite sturdy and nice looking to replace it.

The highlight for many for the keyboard would be that it was made, in part at least, out of a desire for a Commodore-64 keyboard. It appears to function well andlooks great, so be sure to check out the other pictures after the break! Continue reading “A Wooden Computer Case, Monitor Stand, And Keyboard” →

Hardware-based Keyboard Remapping

October 6, 2011 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

[Nav] wanted to change his keyboard mapping for one particular keyboard, rather than on each operating system. He used an AT90USBKey as a replacement PCB by soldering to all of the contacts on the key matrix. This allows him to remap the keys by following onscreen prompts.

The board enumerates as an HID device, and has a special mode which is accesses by plugging the keyboard in while holding down any key. If a text editor window is active you’ll see prompts from the microcontroller to press a series of keys. This is a routine used to learn how the key matrix is organized, and it’s your opportunity to change how each key is mapped. Since the mapping is saved to EEPROM, you can use any computer to map the keys, then plug the device into a systems that don’t offer software remapping. It could also be useful as a gaming keyboard, assuming there aren’t latency issues

As with the AVR-based arcade controller, this project uses the LUFA package to handle the USB stack.

Very Impressive Steampunk Keyboard

October 4, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 31 Comments

After spending more than 250 hours on his project, [Admiral Aaron Ravensdale]’s steampunk keyboard is finally done.

The keyboard mod was designed around a Model M. After removing the keycaps, [The Admrial] upcycled the keys from old Continental typewriters. Because his typewriters only had 47 keys and the Model M needs 104, three typewriters needed to be sourced off of eBay. Polishing the metal rings of the typewriter keys ate up more than 100 hours.

After building a brass frame from 8mm tubing and candle holders, the stained wood inlay was drilled for the keys. Status lights were installed and the PCB was connected. A pair of ‘gaslight’ keyboard lights were fabricated using 3mm tubing and very fitting “Golden White” LEDs.

[Admrial Ravensdale] put up an Instructable walking through the build process of his keyboard. There’s also a German-language PDF build log that shows every picture of every step.

This isn’t [Admrial Ravensdale]’s first Hack A Day feature, but with a build that might one-up the original steampunk keyboard we can’t wait to see what comes out of [The Admiral]’s workshop next.

SNES Gamepad Coversion To USB

September 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[Kekszumquadrat] wanted to use a classic controller to play emulator games on his Android tablet so he set out to convert an SNES gamepad to connect via USB. He found an old USB keyboard at a yard sale for about 3 Euros. He knew that the emulator he prefers has the option of remapping all the inputs to keyboard keys which means a USB keyboard has all of the electronics he would need to pull this off.

Once he had separated the keyboard circuitry from the case [Kekszumquadrat] plugged it into his Linux box and used Xev to establish how the keyboard matrix is set up. Xev is a common package that opens up an active window on the X desktop. When run from command line, any events that happen to the window will be echoed along with verbose data about that event. When it comes to keypresses, you’ll get the keycode you need. He simply shorted columns and rows until he found the desired mapping, then it was on to soldering.

The SNES controllers are very simple devices. As we’ve seen with previous projects, they use a serial-to-parallel shift register to gather button data and send it to the console. [Kekszumquadrat] simply soldered between button traces and keyboard matrix contacts. Once he finished, the keyboard parts were tucked inside of the controller case and he’s left with a USB controller that appears to be unaltered.