Social Engineering Your Way To The Target PA System

If we were to express an official view of the what these guys did once they hacked into a Target store’s PA system, we’d have to go with definitely uncool. However, it’s good to know that phone phreaking and good ol’ social engineering isn’t dead yet. Many of us got our start by playing with the systems around us.

Anyone could call into a Target store and request to be transferred to the PA’s extension code, which was the same everywhere. If the person transferring the call wasn’t quick on their feet, the caller would then be patched directly into the stores PA system. The kicker? Target had no way of stopping the PA until the caller hung-up. It’s the way the system was designed.

The hack itself is embarrassingly simple. The PA is attached to the in-store phone network. This is pretty standard. We’ve all seen a sales associate go up to phone in a store, dial a number, and make an announcement throughout the store. Where Target went wrong is improper separation of systems, and poorly thought out standardization.

The weakest link in security is always the people it’s designed for, not the one’s it’s designed to keep out. It’s a fun little prank, and hopefully Target has it sorted out now.

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TEMPEST: A Tin Foil Hat For Your Electronics And Their Secrets

Electronics leak waves and if you know what you’re doing you can steal people’s data using this phenomenon. How thick is your tinfoil hat? And you sure it’s thick enough? Well, it turns out that there’s a (secret) government standard for all of this: TEMPEST. Yes, all-caps. No, it’s not an acronym. It’s a secret codename, and codenames are more fun WHEN SHOUTED OUT LOUD!

The TEMPEST idea in a nutshell is that electronic devices leak electromagnetic waves when they do things like switch bits from ones to zeros or move electron beams around to make images on CRT screens. If an adversary can remotely listen in to these unintentional broadcasts, they can potentially figure out what’s going on inside your computer. Read on and find out about the history of TEMPEST, modern research, and finally how you can try it out yourself at home!

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phone controller

Breathe New Life Into Payphones With Asterisk

Payphones used to be found on just about every street corner. They were a convenience, now replaced by the ubiquitous mobile phone. These machines were the stomping grounds for many early computer hackers, and as a result hold a place in hacker history. If you’ve ever wanted to re-live the good ol’ days, [hharte’s] project might be for you.

[hharte] has been working to make these old payphones useful again with some custom hardware and software. The project intends to be an interface between a payphone and an Asterisk PBX system. On the hardware side, the controller board is capable of switching various high voltage signals required for coin-line signaling. The controller uses a Teensy microcontroller to detect the hook status as well as to control the relays. The current firmware features are very basic, but functional.

[hharte] also wrote a custom AGI script for Asterisk. This script allows Asterisk to detect the 1700hz and 2200hz tones transmitted when coins are placed into the machine. The script is also in an early stage, but it will prompt for money and then place the call once 25 cents has been deposited. All of the schematics and code can be found on the project’s github page.

[Thanks mies]

The Phone Phreaking Files

[Jason Scott] curated a nice collection of links related to [Phil Lapsley]’s work on phone phreaking. [Lapsley]’s book, The History of Phone Phreaking, will be released in 2009. Meanwhile phone phreak enthusiasts can peruse his site and bone up on some interesting material, including documents that revealed the inner workings of the telephone switchboard(PDF), and the Youth International Party Line (YIPL)/Technological American Party (TAP) FBI files(PDF), which is really intriguing for the various doodles and conversations that were documented. If you have some spare time, we definitely recommend sifting through it.

[via Waxy]

ToorCon Seattle 2008: Lightning Talks


The second ToorCon Seattle got off to a quick start last Friday with a round of Lightning Talks at the Public Nerd Area. Each talk was limited to 5 minutes and covered a broad range of topics. Some talks were just supplying a chunk of information while others were a call to action for personal projects. Here are a few of the talks that we found interesting.

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