September Update: The PinePhone is real & shipping soon

Picture of a PinePhone prototype running Plasma Mobile 

Let’s start with a quick recap of last month’s events: the Pinebook Pro went into production, software development on the PineTab started, we announced the SOEdge AI module and introduced our initiative for giving back to PinePhone Linux developers during the community meetup in London. This, however, is hardly everything. Let me segue into the core topic of this month’s update, namely the PinePhone. Behind the scenes prototype PinePhone PCBs and chassis have been produced and undergone extensive testing. With the testing now completed, we made the decision to manufacture a small batch...

Time safety is more important than memory safety

Why I don't like people claiming you should not start new projects in C

Самодельный лазер на парах хлорида меди

В одной из статей, посвященных моему лазеру на парах меди, на основе активного элемента УЛ-102 в комментариях был задан вопрос – а что же будет дальше? Дальше оставалось только найти способ сделать самостоятельно активный элемент лазера. И этот способ был найден. Об этом речь пойдет в сегодняшнем посте.
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Its time to start giving back

PINE64’s commitment to giving back to the community, partner projects and the society has been outlined by TL Lim during our community meetup in Hyde Park, London on 18 August, 2018. 

Meta: New Minisleep, site rebased

Tales of converting bash to POSIX shell scripts and a picture of my new crazy software sideproject.

Tools of the KNOB Attack

This week at USENIX three researchers published information about a new attack against classic Bluetooth. Known as KNOB, the attack takes advantage of a weakness in the Bluetooth specification to force target Bluetooth connections to use 8-bit encryption keys instead of larger keys that would be resilient against brute-force attack.

This weakness in classic Bluetooth (not Bluetooth Low Energy) is a big one. I don’t recall seeing such a significant vulnerability in Basic Rate Bluetooth security since pairing was improved with the introduction of Secure Simple Pairing in Core Specification v2.1 in 2007.

One of the things that intrigued me when I heard about the KNOB attack this week was that it...

August Update: London Meetup, PineTab News, SOEdge and More!

PineTab development prototype

July has been a busy month for all members of the PINE64 project. Between the updates to various systems, preparation of Pinebook Pro pre-orders and the subsequent launch, shipping of PineTab development kits as well as production of the PinePhone prototype, there has been little to no downtime. To this end I wish to publicly thank fireTwoOneNine for doing a hell of a job helping out, troubleshooting problems and setting up the systems necessary to keep the wheels turning. An awesome job and a huge thank you. Here is what is on this month’s update agenda: 

Самодельная лазерная установка на парах меди “Lightsaber” – часть 3, заключительная

Я решил составить краткую шуточную инструкцию для начинающих некромантов, которые захотят поднимать из мертвых лазеры на парах меди. Виктор Франкенштейн «вдыхал жизнь» в мертвецов, а мы проделаем то же самое с мертвой лазерной трубкой.
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July Update: All about the Pinebook Pro

As I’ve mentioned in last month’s update post, the PinePhone prototypes are currently being manufactured (due in August) and the PineTab dev kits are rolling off the factory line to be shipped out to developers. With both the PinePhone and PineTab currently in-transition to their respective next development stages, I’ll devote this month’s update solely to the Pinebook Pro pre-order announcement, the last unannounced feature of the laptop as well as a hardware and software status update. 

Reverse Engineering Black Box Systems with GreatFET, Troopers 2018

https://archive.org/embed/reverse-engineering-black-box-systems-with-greatfet-troopers-2018

In this presentation at Troopers 2018, Kate Temkin and Dominic Spill used GreatFET One and the Facedancer software framework to demonstrate techniques for reverse engineering embedded USB hosts.

It is often fairly simple to set up an environment for reversing a USB device; you just plug it into a host that you control. Then you can manipulate software on the host to test or monitor USB communications between the host and device. Even if the host operating system doesn’t provide a way for you to monitor USB (hint: it probably does), you can run it inside a virtual machine...