Citizen Engineer Inspires (Vicarious) Hardware Hackers

No time to hack? Don't know which end of your soldering iron is hot? Well, check out Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone's fabulous new video series, Citizen Engineer, a fun and thought-provoking show about hardware hacking.

In Volume One, Fried (also known as Ladyada) and Torrone demonstrate SIM card and pay phone hacking. For the former, Ladyada shows how to decode the cards and even decrypt the secret code that authenticates the call. (Not coincidentally, she offers a SIM reader kit in her online store.) The second part shows her popping open a Western Electric payphone to make it work with Skype, and playing around with the payment system. She even adapts the phone to allow her to red box it.

If that weren't geeky enough, Citizen Engineer features digital art made with open source Processing and music made with Ladyada's x0xb0x synthesizer.


Citizen Engineer from citizen engineer on Vimeo.

The History of the Chaos Computer Club

I've been enjoying Bre Pettis's great history of the Chaos Computer Club, a hacker posse from Germany that is quite possibly the coolest group of hackers anywhere. Founded in 1981, it has grown to an astounding 2,000 members.

With causes like ensuring secure voting machines, protecting privacy, defeating censorship and governmental obfuscation, and promoting hacker ethics, the CCC has become something of a hacktivist powerhouse. They hold an annual "Chaos Communications Congress" gathering and also a very cool hacker camp every four years. In 2007 the CCC camp coincided with Defcon 15 (the US's biggest hacker gathering) and a lot of people went to both on a special chartered flight, dubbed "Hackers on a Plane."

Anywho, take a peek at part one of Pettis's history (covering the club's founding through 1984) as well as part two where we learn that the CCC conducted the first computerized bank robbery (and gave the money back) and constructed modems out of toilet pipes to conceal them from government censors.

Make sure to check back at the 100% awesome NYC Resistor site to see the rest of the history as it comes out.

Photo by Mark Hoekstra (cc)

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey

Anyone with even a passing interest in the history of hacking needs to check out this book. The magazine got its start in 1984 and it has covered every peak and valley of of the scene -- momentous events like Operation Sundevil and the bust of Kevin Mitnick, as well as glacial changes like the decline of blue boxing and the rise of the Internet. And for cool, try to spot the pseudonymous contributions from writers who have moved on to find success in the mainstream world. For instance, Cory Doctorow got his start writing for 2600. Preorder this book today, and look for a full review here on Nerdage.net in the next month or two.

Hacker Convention to Make Art Out of RFID

This summer, hackers from around the world will track the movements of thousands of visitors to New York City.

As part of a social experiment, attendees at a hacker conference in July will be issued badges with electronic tracking devices. Large displays will show in real-time where people go, with whom they associate, for how long and how often.

The tracking technology, known as RFID, is fast becoming an unseen part of everyday life. This July, for the very first time, the general public will be able to participate in the transparent operation of a major RFID tracking program.

Conference attendees will participate in games built around the tracking system. Players will seek ways to protect their privacy, find vulnerabilities in the tracking system, employ data mining techniques to learn more about other participants, and choose how much personal information they will disclose in order to play.

This demonstration will be open to the public at The Last HOPE conference from July 18-20 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The first 1500 preregistrants will be guaranteed an RFID badge enabling them to participate in the game. More information and preregistration is available at www.hope.net.

Hackerteen Entertains, Educates and Inspires

While "white hat" or ethical hacking has been around for ages, there has been very little effort on the part of its adherents to pass on these values to the next generation. To clarify, there has always been a element of ethical pressure directed at n00bs. "Script kiddies," neophytes too raw to do anything except duplicate others' hacks, are considered to be the lowest of the low, and are accorded nothing but contempt -- well, and scripts. But in terms of positively encouraging ethical hacking on the part of kids too little to actually script, I can't recall anything as cool as Hackerteen Vol 1.: Internet Blackout.

The comic's story involves Yago, a young computer prodigy who is sent to Hackerteen, a school for gifted kids. Run something like a dojo with freshmen taking White Belt classes and the seniormost students called Black Belts, the school provides the perfect environment for Yago. As his skills increase over the years, he finds himself being targeted by criminals seeking to hire him for nefarious ends. When his family runs into some financial misfortune, he accepts the wrong job and ends up getting tangled up in the criminals' schemes.

The story itself probably won't wow the average adult, but it's great for preteens and insidiously -- in a good way -- it sprinkles mature concepts like ODF in the story without explanation, with a footnote supplying a link so kids can learn more. If readers aren't interested they can skim over the unfamiliar terms and still understand the story.

Parents unfamiliar with the concept of ethical hacking may get nervous about exposing their children to a comic book that glorifies hacking. However, there is a strong moral current throughout the story, with predatory adults (the usual scum: suits, politicians) attempting to turn the Hackerteen students' elite skills towards criminal activities, to the utter scorn of the kids. My stepdaughter, who had some -- how shall I put it -- administrative difficulties in 5th grade for creatively accessing school systems, was quickly engrossed by the book, and it encouraged me that a kid who had made mistakes in the past was fascinated by a book that so unequivocally blasts similarly illegal acts.

Interestingly, Hackerteen is a real school that mainly teaches via distance learning. Admitting students between the ages of 14 and 19 and offering a 2-year program, the school teaches about open source software, ethics, psychology and entrepreneurship. Headquartered in Sao Paolo, Brazil, the school is currently seeking franchises around the world.

There is a clear moral message in the real world, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do that thing. To educate kids that that applies to computers too, and to do it in an entertaining and respectful manner, as Hackerteen does, is incredibly valuable.

Hacker Collective Offers Nerd Classes

Saturday, 4/12 -- Game Boy Software Development 101

Tuesday, 4/15 and Wednesday, 4/16 -- Soldering 102 and Electronics 102

If you miss out on those sessions, check out their calendar for more. They also have Soldering 101, Electronics 101, Rapid Prototyping and three Arduino classes.

Makes me wish I lived in NYC! Someone tell me there's something as cool as this in Minneapolis!

Hacking: The Art of Exploitation

What is hacking? According to Fox News or USA Today it's bad people doing bad things with computers. Ask a hacktivist and he'd tell you hackers are just free spirits exploring the Internet. According to security expert and author Jon Erickson, hacking consists of creative program solving, used for better or for worse by programmers and criminals. Regardless of how you feel about the phenomenon, it exists. You can either stick your head in the sand or learn and adapt.

If your inclination leans toward the latter, check out Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, written by Erickson and published by No Starch. If you're interested in philosophical debates, however, steer clear -- the book is too busy dishing out practical info.

The meat of the book consists of exploits, those nasty little vulnerabilities that can turn your desktop into a Viagra-hawking zombie. Buffer overflow? Got it. Busting non-executable stacks? Yo. Spoofin' packets? Aw yeah. This portion of the book is a security professional's paradise, burrowing down to the code level of dozens of different loopholes and explaining the underlying logic behind the attacks. The book comes with a CD-Rom with a bootable Linux hacking environment so you can tinker all you want without affecting your system's normal OS.

Not a programmer? Don't feel like you could get absolutely nothing from this book. The first two chapters focus on theoretical stuff that are common among all programming languages, like If-Then-Else constructs and For loops. Probably this chapter will be skipped over by more experienced readers, but I see it as being very helpful to absolute noobs who just want to learn more about hacking. Although, unless you are a sophisticated programmer, sooner or later you'll reach the limit of your abilities and you'll have to close the book. Despite the accessibility of these initial topics, Hacking is not really a beginner's resource.

So what is the value of this book? Some people equate hacking purely with criminal activity. Others take a blind eye to ne'er-do-wells and think of this sort of knowledge as pure and innocent. The reality may lay in the middle; a double-edged sword that may help criminals but also aids the efforts of security professionals and private citizens. Books like Hacking might help the bad guys but they definitely help the good.

Toy Hacking Workshop

I'm guessing at least a couple Robosapiens are busted already. Or maybe last year's gifts are long forgotten and destined for the trash bin. Well, what better to do with the junk than pop it open and play with its electronics?

For those who are too scared or success-oriented to DIY, there's a cool-sounding Toy Hacking workshop being held in London this month.

Don’t know what to do with those spare toys lying around post-Christmas season? This workshop just might be the thing for you. After a successful Pimp my Gadget workshop in Budapest, we have the pleasure of having Adam Somlai Fisher and Massimo Banzi lead his 2 day fun workshop during which you will be doing some wire bending, learn about basic electronics and hack toys!

Put on by Tinker.it, a "technology and design consultancy" with offices in London, Milan and Amsterdam, they also offer workshops on Processing and Arduinos. No electronic knowledge is necessary but you do need to bring a laptop and a toy to hack. Tickets are 90 pounds or 75 for students.

What I wanna know is, why can't we get cool workshops like this around where I live?

(Note, the picture is of a similar event put on for students of the Willem de Kooning Academy.)

Photo by Danja Vasiliev

Lockpicking for Geekkids

I remember convincing my sister to wrap a bicycle chain around me and lock it up tight and shove me in a closet. Despite the fact that we'd use a very sophisticated and nigh unpickable padlock, I emerged victorious a few minutes later. Little did she know I had employed the Houdini method of escapology -- I had taped a spare key to my foot. Despite my willingness to cheat, by then I was already adept at picking smaller locks -- the little brass locks kids buy, as well as diary locks and cheaper commercial padlocks. It was good, geeky fun.

Kids are always playing with locks, because locks define boundaries -- growing up is always about testing boundaries, and about setting them. You keep big brother from reading your diary, or little sister from stealing your lip gloss. For geekkids, there is an added, technological element -- a refusal to allow a puzzle with an obvious solution (a key or substitute) to defeat them. Most geek(kid)s don't want to break into a locked area to commit larceny. It's purely curiosity -- geeks dislike having artificial limits placed on them.

This mindset is demonstrated in adult geek culture. Many hackers (in the good sense of the word) are skilled lockpickers -- they study the innards of a lock the same as they would a computer's guts. There are "lockpick workshops" at most major hacker conventions where various models are tested. In 1991 MIT hackers released a definitive Lockpicking Guide which has been distributed widely by PDF. (In)famous hacker Kevin Mitnick's business card is metal with usable lockpicks that can be snapped out of it.

(By the way, if you can get to Las Vegas this weekend, there will be a "Lockpicking Village" at the Defcon hacker conference.)

Speaking of limits, most parents will want to place clear guidelines on their kids' explorations. The ability to pick locks does not mean it's okay to violate others' property rights and privacy. At same time, knowing that clever children with agile fingers and bent pieces of wire are creeping around the house forces Mom and Dad to up the ante securitywise. Is Dad's gun cabinet off limits? Better make sure the padlock is up to snuff. This is its own reward because it increases security against actual evildoers.

By the way, I wouldn't recommend buying lockpicking tools unless you're a locksmith by trade because they are illegal in some areas and suspicious in most others. On that note here is a good how-to guide for using non-professional tools to open locks.

And finally, a couple of links:

The Lockdown, a security blog with a focus on locks.

TOOOL: The Open Organization of Lockpickers