Adafruit's Citizen Engineer comic book / SIM card reader kit

The gang at Adafruit Industries are on a mission -- and they won't rest until every man, woman, and child on this planet has access to the DIY and open source electronics they crave. The most recent project of theirs, Citizen Engineer: SIM Card Hacking, is a comic book that both serves as a primer on GSM and SIM cards and tells you how to build a SIM card reader. And if that weren't awesome enough, if you purchase the title for $35 they'll throw in the reader kit -- either enabling your thirst for knowledge or jump-starting you on your path towards a new life as a hacker / fixer for the Russian Mafia. Video after the break.

[IOhazard @ Jul 10th 2009 4:30AM]

FiRsT!!!!

[~:Dhruv:~ @ Jul 10th 2009 4:40AM]

Congrats !

This seems pretty cool actually ;) All geeks should buy one of these !

[Absolute92 @ Jul 10th 2009 5:51AM]

How did this First shit start ? That person deserves to die.

[tobz1000 @ Jul 10th 2009 6:22AM]

It started with someone being proud of stumbling upon an article with no comments.

[richb93 @ Jul 10th 2009 6:39AM]

You should be first to replace your keyboard. The caps lock is broken by the look of it.

[Jake @ Jul 10th 2009 8:43AM]

Your name has a typo in it. It should read "IQHazard", as in spending time with you is hazardous to one's IQ.

-jp

[kam @ Jul 12th 2009 10:43PM]

I think it came from Slashdot where there were so many nerds salivating over new network security news that the first person to post was quite an accomplishment. This lead to the slashdot effect where posting a link to a website used to crash it with all the people trying to view the article at once. Now the "first" thing is just some lame ironic joke by kids with no personality and no clue.

[Twenty5 @ Jul 10th 2009 6:42AM]

Woah I might actually just get this!

[ack154 @ Jul 10th 2009 7:52AM]

^ Pics or GTFO.

No really though, this seems pretty cool. And to even include the kit with it? That's pretty special right there. We definitely need more DIY stuff out there like this.

[Jake @ Jul 10th 2009 8:41AM]

Drat! Out already!

-jp

[DrBoris @ Jul 10th 2009 9:31AM]

I'm a DIYr but its a little steep for a comic book.... The kit is in stock for $17 and the comic book + kit is $35! ouch

[blore40 @ Jul 10th 2009 9:41AM]

Adafruit's rearranged becomes It's a fraud.

[HyperHacker @ Jul 10th 2009 10:00AM]

So how many people are going to ruin their SIM cards with this and try to sue over it?

Also they appear to be using factorial volume numbers... that could get interesting after a couple issues.

[Frankenstein Black @ Jul 10th 2009 10:11AM]

MEH!! Can it "clone" a SIM card?

[Jsjohnson @ Jul 10th 2009 10:54AM]

My understanding is that basically any GSM card made in the past say 6-8 years has been uncloneable. You might be able to get the contacts off of it but you won't get any of the important network information like you used to. For me personally, I would like to know that if my primary phone is ever lost, stolen, or damaged to the point where the SIM is destroyed, I could immediately plug a replacement SIM into another old phone and be off.

[DrBoris @ Jul 10th 2009 11:07AM]

http://citizenengineer.com/

[Icello @ Jul 10th 2009 11:24AM]

Sorry, I'm not very good with this... What would you use a sim card reader for?

[Wwhat @ Jul 10th 2009 2:19PM]

I don't get it either, for the contact you can buy a universal SD/MMC/etc. card reader that also reads SIM card for $10, so I guess it's mean to somehow hack SIM cards? but as pointed out here that's not so simple and I don't think a comicbook-style publication is going to do that.
Ultimately it's just a cheap gimmick to buy a worthless rag I guess.

[gHost @ Jul 10th 2009 2:31PM]

hmm...give me a comic book with an RFID writer/reader and we have got a deal, my friends...

[Ahmed Osman @ Jul 10th 2009 8:15PM]

While I don't have an immediate use for a sim card reader or hacking one since I have a CDMA phone, I've been wanting to get into cellular hacking and this looks like a pretty neat intro to it. Snatched one up.