Digital Lock-Picking: This Simple Arduino Hack Opens Millions of Hotel Keycard Doors It used to be that you only had to worry about maids rummaging through your belongings in your locked hotel room. But now anyone with 50 bucks of hardware and some programming skills can hack their way in—as long as it's locked by keycard. At the Black Hat security conference yesterday, a hacker named Cody Brocious, a Mozilla software developer, demonstrated how someone could gain instant, untraceable access to millions of hotel rooms protected by key card locks made by Onity. Every single Onity key card lock has a DC power socket on the base. This socket is used to charge up the battery inside the device, as well as program the lock with the hotel's own sitecode, a 32-bit key that identifies the specific hotel. Photos by Power Jack Repair, Neon For the hack, Brocious simply plugged in his programmed Arduino microcontroller into the socket, which let him read the key from the lock's stored memory. “I plug it in, power it up, and the lock opens,” Brocious says.
The wireless network with a mile-wide range that the “internet of things” could be built on Robotics engineer Taylor Alexander needed to lift a nuclear cooling tower off its foundation using 19 high-strength steel cables, and the Android app that was supposed to accomplish it, for which he’d just paid a developer $20,000, was essentially worthless. Undaunted and on deadline—the tower needed a new foundation, and delays meant millions of dollars in losses—he re-wrote the app himself. That’s when he discovered just how hard it is to connect to sensors via the standard long-distance industrial wireless protocol, known as Zigbee. It took him months of hacking just to create a system that could send him a single number—which represented the strain on each of the cables—from the sensors he was using. Surely, he thought, there must be a better way. The result is an in-the-works project called Flutter. Flutter’s range is 3,200 feet in open air, but multiple Flutters can also cover even larger areas in a “mesh” network.
Hacking the Wiimote IR camera You can connect to the Wii remote over bluetooth or use an Arduino to send peripheral data to the Wiimote, but what if you want to interface directly with the Wiimote’s IR camera? The sensor is particularly good at tracking coordinates for 1 to 4 points—it could be a simple way to add sophisticated tracking capabilities to your own project. David Cranor writes, There is a great site about hacking the wiimote IR camera to interface it with a computer – but it’s all in Japanese! A quick run through Google’s Japanese to English translator yielded a reasonably understandable result: Wii IR sensor connection detailsConnecting the Wii IR sensor to Arduino The second link contains a wealth of information on talking to the IR sensor over I2C, including some details on adjusting sensitivity parameters. Simple Initialization: Just write the following byte sequences, with a small delay between writes (assumes a successful ACK). Hopefully this is all you’ll need to get things working. Related
The real plan for Google Glass may be to sell it to businesses, not consumers Yesterday evening in New York City, Google’s Glass team threw a party. It brought together “Explorers” and “Influencers”—the lucky few people who got to try out the computerized glasses Google is developing. Over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, the diverse crowd gushed about the joys and dissected the drawbacks of the device, which they’ve been wearing for the last few months. The takeaway? Google Glass is not for who you think it is. Members of the Glass operations team have been on the road showing it off to companies and organizations, and they told Quartz that some of the most enthusiastic responses have come from manufacturers, teachers, medical companies, and hospitals. Those potential uses are manifold. Other uses of Glass would be in medicine. Finance companies are already taking to Glass. This is not to say that ordinary people won’t ever use Glass. These aren’t the kinds of uses that keep a Glass on your face 24/7.
Glossary This page serves as a glossary of commonly used Wii homebrew terms. Think of it as a mini dictionary for words you'll hear a lot while reading through our wiki. It was started to help newcomers to the homebrew scene better understand our jargon. Stands for Advanced Encryption Standard. See also: [[Encryption]] The CBC (Cipher Block Chaining) mode of AES with a 128 bit key, that is used on the Wii. Backup A copy of a game that has been dumped from the original disc in case it should become unusable due to wear/damage. Banner The animated graphics displayed on a channel's icon and startup screen in the System Menu. See also: Banner Brick, System Menu. Bannerbomb An exploit used to run homebrew on any System Menu version. Banner Brick An error preventing the Wii's channel menu from displaying. See also: System Menu, Brick, Semi-Brick, WAD. An old programming language very few apps are programmed in via a BASIC to C converter and compiler. See also: Source, Compile. Binary Bit boot0 boot1 boot2 BootMii
'Uncrackable' codes set for step up 4 September 2013Last updated at 13:09 ET By Melissa Hogenboom Science reporter, BBC News Quantum cryptography is a way to share secret digital keys A system that allows electronic messages to be sent with complete secrecy could be on the verge of expanding beyond niche applications. A team of British scientists has discovered a way to build communications networks with quantum cryptography at a larger scale than ever before. Quantum cryptography has the potential to transform the way sensitive data is protected. Details appear in Nature journal. The system is based on a communication system, where information is carried by individual photons - single particles of light. Once these single photons of light are observed, they change. Continue reading the main story Quantum key distribution Secret communication The team says they have now extended the way to send uncrackable codes - referred to as "quantum key distribution" (QKD) - beyond very niche applications. Mobile cryptography
Other consoles Entries Tagged as 'Other consoles' “Pandora’s Xbox: The changing community of the modern console” May 1st, 2010 · 15 Comments We spoke with Matthew Braga a little while back for an article he was doing about console hacking — at the risk of sounding self-promotional, I thought he did a really nice job of it. [Read more →] Tags: dsi · Other consoles · Wii bad words April 19th, 2010 · 20 Comments Now that I’ve established some context, maybe this will make some more sense. [Read more →] Tags: Other consoles SunPlus: The biggest chip company you’ve never heard of April 18th, 2010 · 18 Comments Every once in a while, you stumble upon something that nobody else seems to have paid much attention to. [Read more →] Tags: Other consoles · Wii
Disney develops 'magical' device to make fingertips sing 10 September 2013Last updated at 07:04 ET By Joe Miller BBC News Disney has demonstrated its new Ishin-Den-Shin audio system Disney has developed a device to transmit sound through the human body. The Ishin-Den-Shin technology uses a standard microphone to record audio and then converts it into an inaudible signal transmitted through the body of the person holding the microphone. When they touch someone's earlobe, an organic speaker is formed and the sound becomes audible, effectively whispering a message into that person's ear. The sound can be passed from person to person using any physical contact. The technology, revealed by the New Scientist, was developed at Disney Research in Pittsburgh and received an honorary mention at this week's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Small vibrations It records sounds through a device fitted to the microphone that creates a "modulated electrostatic field" around the user's skin. The recorded sound can be heard only by the specific ear touched.