IPod Touch 2G Jailbreak Demoed

January 17, 2009 by Eliot 19 Comments

redsn0w

Now that the iphone-dev team has unlocked the iPhone 3G they’re moving onto jailbreaking the iPod Touch 2G. While they have a fully working jailbreak, it’s not yet in a user friendly format. [MuscleNerd] did a live video demo this afternoon to show what progress they had made. It starts with him showing the iPod on but not booting. He’s already patched the kernel, but it’s failing the signature check in iboot. He then uses the team’s recoverytool to exploit a hole in iboot and patch out the signature check. The ipod then boots normally and he shows non-App Store software like Mobile Terminal, Cydia, and an NES Emulator (which makes use of the iPod’s internal speaker).

The redsn0w jailbreak works, but it has to be applied via tether every time the iPod boots. The team won’t release anything until they’ve found a way around this problem. For more insight into the boot process, check out our coverage of their Hacking the iPhone talk at 25C3.

Major DNS Issue Causes Multivendor Patch Day

July 8, 2008 by Juan Aguilar 5 Comments

Earlier this year, our friend [Dan Kaminsky] discovered a major DNS issue that could allow hackers to compromise name servers and clients easily. The vulnerability involves cache poisoning, and [Kaminsky] plans to publish the full details of the vulnerability on August 6th. However, he has already begun his work to control it, alerting major authorities early on of the vulnerability.

As a result, engineers from many major technology vendors quickly began working on coordinated patches for DNS servers. The patches were all released today; vendors and a CERT advisory urge organizations to apply them today, before the vulnerability becomes common knowledge. More details on the DNS issue can be found in the executive overview (PDF file). [Rich Mogull] interviewed [Dan] for the Network Security Podcast. It doesn’t detail the attack but points out that services that use port randomization like OpenDNS are unaffected and that Bind8 is being deprecated.

UPDATE: Here’s the audio from this morning’s press conference.

[image: Flickr / d70focus ]

EMS Synthi AKS Teardown

June 25, 2008 by Eliot 1 Comment

Here’s another bit of analog synth pr0n for you: Initially sold in 1972, the EMS Synthi AKS was a portable modular analog synthesizer with a built in keyboard and sequencer. The VCS 3 portion of the device had a unique routing matrix pegboard used to connect components together. [firegroove] has opened up his precious machine so that you can see all of the fine little bits that make it tick… and chirp.