Defeating Spread Spectrum Communication with Software Defined Radio, ToorCon 2013

https://archive.org/embed/toorcon-2013-ossmann-spread-spectrum

Fortunately in this video you can't hear the jackhammers at work in the hotel lobby while I gave this presentation at the ToorCon San Diego seminars in October, 2013. Apart from having to talk over the construction noise, it was great to share SDR techniques that can be used to point out flaws in security claims made about spread spectrum communication technologies.

One of the things I showed in the talk was how Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) communications can be reverse engineered. I used SPOT Connect, a device operating on the GlobalStar satellite network as an example. A couple years later, Colby Moore did a...

Free Stuff, April 2015

My, how time flies! The Great Scott Gadgets team has been busy, but we haven't forgotten all of your requests for FREE STUFF! We are working towards getting caught up, so please bear with us as we sort it all out. April had a lot of good submissions, and we are excited to reward several of you with free open source hardware. And to make up for being so behind, we even awarded a YARD Stick One this time, and we shipped it when it was brand new! Read on to learn about April's winning Free Stuff submissions.

Damon Wascom wrote to us...

Meta: Site fixes and various reflections

Atom feed dates and duplication, thumnails and post summaries. A few thoughts on the present and future. Soon to be released init system.

Repair: busted laptop hinge mounting point

Quick repair. Screws pulled, case damaged and inserts plucked. All hail Araldities, Greek goddess of glue.

Vortrag angemeldet: Reducing Complexity: Zur Verwendung pseudo-klassischer Datenstrukturen und Interfaces in modernen Wissensmanagementsystemen

Monochrome Bildschirmdarstellung, maximal 64kB adressierbarer Speicher – das sind nicht die technischen Daten eines klassischen 8-Bit-Computers, sondern die Parameter eines Wissensmanagementsystems, dass der Autor im Auftrag eines Industriekonzerns entworfen hat. Im Zeitalter von Big Data und immer komplexer werdenden Such- bzw. Informationsstrukturen bringt die selbst auferlegte Beschränkung dem Nutzer einen Zeit- und Erkenntnisgewinn – getreu dem Motto: Weniger ist mehr. Im Mittelpunkt des Vortrags stehen die technischen Beschränkungen der 8-Bit-Ära und ihre Implementierung in einem Cloud-basierten Wissensmanagement-Tool auf Basis von XPages.
Carsten Lucassen

Vortrag angemeldet: What we are really looking at? Mediennostalgie und Retrogaming

Mediennostalgie und Retrogaming sind in aller Munde. Aber was sind eigentlich die Grundlagen dieser Bewegung? Welche psychologischen Phänomene spielen hierzu eine Rolle? Und warum ist gerade das Computerspiel quasi prädestiniert dafür, als nostalgischer Anreger zu dienen? Der Vortrag von Sebastian Felzmann bündelt diese Fragen und gibt einen Überblick über die aktuellen Wirkungstheorien der Nostalgie in Verbindung mit der Entwicklungslinie des Mediums Computerspiel. Dabei kann das Spiel natürlich niemals ohne die materielle Grundlage, also die Computer- und Videosysteme, gedacht werden.
Sebastian Felzmann

State of my ARM Chromebook

After years of usage my laptop has taken a bit of a beating. Stories and solutions to problems that I have encountered using linux on an armv7h laptop.

Moving away from Arch Linux Part 1: Systemd

Why I want to abandon my current distro and move to another. Stories of systemd breaking my systems and getting its tendrils into places that I'm not comfortable with. Ooh! Not there! aaaaah!

Low Cost SimpliSafe Attacks

Earlier this week, Dr. Andrew Zonenberg of IOActive published a security advisory and blog post describing weaknesses in the SimpliSafe home security system. He showed that components of the system, such as the keypad, transmit unencrypted radio signals that can be captured and replayed. He also pointed out the significant problem that SimpliSafe devices are physically incapable of being reprogrammed with improved firmware that might address such vulnerabilities.

I know Andrew and have great respect for his reverse engineering and hardware hacking talents. He implemented a replay attack by making small modifications to SimpliSafe devices, monitoring and controlling them from his own hardware platform. To demonstrate...

Диагностика Imprecise Bus Faults в микроконтроллерах Cortex-M3/M4/M4F

При разработке программ для систем на микроконтроллерах серий Cortex-M3/M4/M4F программисты, бывает, сталкиваются с исключениями ядра, когда программа останавливается в бесконечном цикле в обработчике FaultISR. Как правило, попадая в этот обработчик вы уже не можете определить что произошло, т.к. стек вызовов в отладчике уже не отображается. Еще хуже, если в регистре Fault Status появится ошибка Imprecise Bus Error. Вот про диагностику этой ошибки я и расскажу.

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