Blocked Out

So, my friend gave me a Laptop.  It is a Dell Latitude CS.  This thing has a Pentium 2 and runs on Windows 98.  It barely makes a noise, it has no CD drive, no Floppy Drive, no ethernet or modem cable.  There seems to be no way to get any information in or out of.  Except... through its one USB hub.  Problem is, it needs Drivers for any of the USB things I put into it.  And it searches online for them... or off a floppy drive.... or its non existant CD drive.  So, the new task:  Talk to this Stubborn computer.  Once I can get information into it, I think I will be able to do awesome stuff, but we shall see...

The Ultimate Hack

I was watching a movie in my human anatomy class today, and I saw an amazing invention. This machine, built by a Japanese telephone corporation allows for the ultimate hack. I'm not talking about hacking into uber-encrypted, top security government servers and systems. And I'm not talking about hacking your automobile to get more miles for your gas money. Oh no. I'm talking about something much more exciting. I'm talking about this:



Yes, thats right. A Japanese company has discovered a way to hack the human mind and turn a normal person into a remote control car!

This technology, called galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) uses low level electric pulses from electrodes to stimulate the inner ear. Because the ear controls your balance using liquid filled tubes, scientists have been playing around with electricity to effect human balance. And now they have succeeded.

With this new technology, it is possible to have a person move either left or right while walking by stimulating their ear's balance mechanism. While you can not be forced to move left or right specifically (at least not by this device), because of the way your brain reacts to the electrical stimuli, it will feel as if you are falling unless you move in the direction the remote control tells you to move in.

While I can see this technology being very, very useful in those "non-lethal" military situations, NTT has a different idea for the technology. Video games. With the ability to physically effect how someone feels currently, such as making them dizzy or feel like they are moving in a certain direction, the video game possibilities are endless. The GVS also has the capability of being used to help people with balance disorders, or even as human GPS!

What do you think? Is this much control over the human mind good or bad? If you had the chance to use this technology to be controlled by a stranger as a tourist attraction, would you?

An Interesting Article

Read it, digest it, think about it, and when you find reasons to disagree, post your comments!

http://www.lifereboot.com/2007/10-reasons-it-doesnt-pay-to-be-the-computer-guy/

Thank you SFTT.

Exploit #1 - School Attack

What kind of bloggers would we be if we just talked about everything cool happening in the world, and didn't actually do anything ourselves?  We are a hacking blog, we talk about hacks, see what hacks are out there, and how to defend against them.  As always, you should hack responsibly, working on making the world (or network) a safer place.

So what did I do that merits a blog post?  My friend and I were at school today, messing around.  Our school is pretty special in that it has two networks, a public one, and a private encrypted one.  Of course, the encryptions is only WEP, so my friend hacked it and shared the key with me.  Great, we are in.  So now what do we do?

Cue nmap.  A necessary program which allows us to view other computers on the network.  Because we are on the Secure Network, so are all the other school's computers.  Well, my friend and I found the school's server which was hosting the firewall.  In our attempts to hack it, I showed another friend around.

I explained that the Firewall really isn't that big a deal.  To get around it, you can just "ping" a website to find out its address, and then use the IP address instead of the URL to reach the site.  As an example, I typed in this to my OpenSuse Terminal:
$ping www
Of course, this brought up an unexpected result.  It fetched the IP address of the school's website, which was on the network.  I then used nmap to map its ports:
$ sudo nmap -sS IPADDRESS
And this showed me that our school's web server was running an FTP client with the FTP port open.  Using the terminal, I FTP'ed into it, (I used my own username and password, which worked).
The FTP brought me to my own files and folders.  I wasn't surprised, I had used my own log in credentials.  What did surprise me though, was that I could access some other folders.  I went back to the root directory, and found that there were quite a few folders which I didn't know existed.  I poked around a little bit, and then left.

There was a lot of other things to explore, and we haven't gotten into the Sonic Wall yet, but nmap has proven to be invaluable already.  Now we just need to sniff some passwords.

Hooking up your Computer to your TV

So, have you ever downloaded a movie, and wished, really badly, that you could see it on something besides your Eeepc, but all you have is your kinda okay Laptop?  Well, I just realized how easy it is to hook up your laptop to your TV for some serious big screen action.  And that makes me happy.  Very happy.

So how is it done?

2 checks and a cable, and you should be good to go (not counting audio, but who needs sound?!)  The first step is to see what outputs your computer has for Video.  Most should have VGA, but some of the older ones may only use DVI or an S-Video out.  The look like this, respectively.

The next step is to find the Video input from your TV.  Now, on my television, this was quite simple.  I looked at the back, found a VGA "Computer" slot (yes, it was even labeled computer).  Other older televisions may have a DVI-D, or just a S-Video, so you will have to hunt for the correct input.  What then?  Then you mix and match.  Find the proper cable, and you should be good to go.  Without Audio of course.

Firefox's New Look

After Successfuly hacking my own computer, I booted up Firefox to a new view.  Granted, I did just update from 3.01 to 3.02, but I don't think a remixed UI was in the bill.  I mean, this is what I see:

Seriously?  I hope my hacking didn't mess up Firefox, that is NOT what I inteded to hack.  In the meanwhile, enjoy the rendering errors!

Edit:  Apparently it was caused by a malfuntion in the updating process.  Lesson learned, don't try opening Firefox twice when it wants to update.

Hacking Passwords

So, ever want to log into your friends computer, but don't know their password?  Well, on a good well protected computer, you are probably screwed.  But, on most computers, (I'm sure this will work on many public computers, like the ones you find in Hotel lobbies) there are some simple work arounds.

1:  The first thing you should try is booting the computer, and booting it into safe mode.  This can be done differently depending on the computer, but usually you have to hit a function key (f(x)) to get it to boot into safe mode. From there, log in as "Administrator" with a blank password.  If this works, you can then change or create any passwords for any other user.

Other methods coming soon!