On Monday the 28th of September 2015 a rather rare event occurred. At around 4 a.m. the moon changed its colour into a dim of red, luckily the sky was clear enough to see something.
If you missed that event your next chance will be in about 15 years or so.
The reason for being awake this early wasn’t the moon in the first place but what followed afterwards – my trip to the hardwear.io Security Conference in The Hague.
During my stay in The Hague I needed to print something, so I asked for a Copy shop and this is where they sent me:
Against the common rule to just talk about the personal favorites, I will cover all talks in one, two or more sentences (arbitrarily decided while writing). This also gives you a broader picture of the conference.
Jumping right in with the keynote of Day 1 by Jon Callas and my favorite quote “Make your devices fixable”. Enough said.
Unlike the German Oktoberfest in Munich which already started in September, the Oktoberfest in The Hague started on 2nd October.
In spite of this competing event the decision going to the last day of the hardwear.io Conference definitely paid off.
Day 2 started with the Keynote from Harald Welte (the father of Osmocom) and his view about Telecom Security for the last few years. His observation is that nothing has changed so far – we still suffer from a lack of tools and monoculture throughout the industry.
On October 1st and 2nd Flo and I were presenting at
hardwear.io in The Hague, NL. My topic was “Living in a fool’s wireless-secured paradise” and Flo was presenting his current research
on medical device security. It was the first talk at an international
security conference for me and I am still quite excited!
I was speaking about the (in)security of wireless consumer alarm
systems, which you can buy just in every consumer electronics store
around the corner for about $10 – $250. I analyzed the systems on
different levels, e.g. looking at UART and JTAG and the wireless domain
with Software Defined Radio (SDR). I gave an overview of my current
research and the tools I usually use for hardware hacking, especially my
favorite thing to play with: SDR.
As TROOPERS15 has come to an end, I’ve finally got the time and energy to give you a deeper insight into the TR15 badge. As most of you have probably heard during the conference, this year’s badge was based on the OpenPCD2. The OpenPCD 2 is a 13.56MHz NFC Reader, Writer and Emulator under the GNU GPL v2. As NFC is, yet again, on an uprise, a badge with NFC simply gives you the chance to fiddle around and hack stacks of stuff in the real world. Adding some TROOPERS spirit and a few little secrets we hope we’ve designed a pretty nice badge!
Simple everyday work dialog:
“The heater in the basement is still missing a proper thermostat, the ‘binary solution’ isn’t that effective”
– “Buy one…”
– “Ok”
– “Get one you can break…”
– “Ok, but then I’d like a few tools, too”
– “Go for it.”
(That’s the way work should be!)
Result of the dialog: a Danfoss Living Connect Z ( 014G0013 ) and a TI CC1100 Wireless Mini Dev Kit plus a copy of Z-Force to start with. Goal: Talk to the thermostat!
TROOPERS14 has come to an end, and it’s finally time to let you have a go at the Badge’s source code. As promised, it was slightly modified and extended, to show you the full potential of your new gadget. I’ve added some nice payloads from Nikhil Mittal and a few own ones. Above that, for those who took their parts for soldering home, I’ve also added a few quick instructions on how to do the soldering.
Greetings from the Print Media Academy in Heidelberg. Just in time for TROOPERS14, I’ve got the great honor to present this years badge!
Being a TROOPER is tough: You need to know loads of information, learn even more and be able to work fast.
This year we decided to increase your efficiency and speed when collecting data from computer systems and, let’s say, hacking them! Your newest gadget is based on a plain Arduino Leonardo, modded with one of our famous shields. After adding a few LEDs and buttons, it will power up to full functionality.
I recently got in contact with Intel AMT for the first time. Surely I had heard about it, knew it was “dangerous”, it was kind of exploitable and had to be deactivated. But I hadn’t actually seen it myself. Well, now I have, and I simply love it and you will probably, too (and don’t forget: love and hate are very very close to each other 😉 )
The following blogpost will be a set of features and instructions on how to own a device with an unconfigured copy of Intel AMT without using any complicated hacks or the famous magic!