hacking
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Becks loses two Bimmers to laptop-toting thieves
For every hundred or so stupid criminals that we feature on these pages, there are a few just as brilliant as their contemporaries are dim: look at the international group of hardware pirates who managed to build their own version of Japan's NEC Corp, or the laptop-toting thieves who succesfully stole not one, but two, of soccer football star David Beckham's BMW X5 SUVs by hacking the keyless-entry systems. In the last six months, the Real Madrid star and Mr. Posh Spice has seen two of his $60,000 vehicles lost to geeky criminals, with the most recent GTA occurring while Becks dined at a mall in Spain. Apparently thieves armed with a particular model's security schematics can jack into the car's PC and run software that dumps out the necessary codes for breaking the encryption, allowing them to unlock the doors, start the engine, and in some cases, even disable built-in tracking devices. Yeah, we're kind of impressed, but let's see these fancy criminals use their high-tech lockpicks to "hack" the cold, hard steel of our "Club LX."[Via Left Lane News]
Xbox 360 H4xx0rz admit their hackjob is useless
After previously boasting about a DVD firmware hack that made it possible to run a backup copy of Project Gotham Racing 3 on a modified Xbox 360, one of the hackers behind the mod has joined Microsoft in calling it "useless". Apparently the mod is useless to the general public due to its complexity (the mod "requires that the flash chip is removed from the drive circuit board and inserted into a special flash programming device") and the fact that it could easily destroy an Xbox 360 in the wrong hands.However we must agree with one of the other members of the mod team when he said "given the complexity of the software it seems unlikely that there's no [other] way in." Did you know: Microsoft also make a popular operating system called Windows, an OS notorious for its backdoor vulnerabilities.[Thanks, striegs]
Xbox 360 DVD firmware hacked
Having spent months delving into the internals of the Xbox 360, a team of hackers at xbox360hacker.net have achieved what they call the "first Xbox 360 hack" and topped it off with a video. This shows a backup copy of PGR3 running on a 360 with modified DVD drive firmware--the firmware hack merely allows non-360 discs to be played in the 360, meaning the console will only run signed, unmodified code.It's a small but important first step; anyone interested in homebrew code (e.g. Linux) on the 360 will have to wait for further developments. The team responsible isn't releasing the firmware to the public--if you understand the technology behind it, though, you might be able to duplicate their efforts.Xbox 360 and hacking--the history:Don't count on modding your Xbox 360: Microsoft execXbox 360: The most hack-proof console ever?Xbox 360 inches closer to piracy with bootable, modifiable kiosk DVDXbox 360 hackers cheat at Hexic, make inroads into hacking the 360[Thanks to everyone who sent this in; also via Xbox 360 Fanboy]
Bunnie on the bootable kiosk demo disc
Andrew "bunnie" Huang, the original Xbox hacker, has chimed in on the promise of the bootable kiosk demo disc. Although he acknowledges the many difficulties of bypassing Microsoft's not insignificant security precautions, he writes, "I’m very surprised that such a media was even released into the wild by Microsoft…their own worst enemy is their own haste to get to the market and carelessness; security is for naught without consideration of human factors. Very exciting! Perhaps the Xbox 360 will be opened without the need for significant hardware hacking."
Norton AV for OS X makes a Mac less secure
Ah the beautiful irony: last Tuesday, as many of us were getting ready for family and the holidays, Symantec admitted that a serious security flaw has affected about 40 of their products, including all versions of Norton Anti-Virus (NAV) for OS X. Symantec calls this a 'high risk' vulnerability that could allow a remote user to gain control of a computer, even a Mac, that's running any of their affected software. I haven't seen anything about a solution for either side of the fence yet, so if you're crazy for security I don't envy the dilemma a situation like this might put you in. An up-to-date and patched copy of OS X is widely hailed to be pretty secure these days (so run Software Update - regularly!), but the ZDNet Australia article that we found this in poses the important security question pretty well: "As the owner of a Powerbook I am faced with a dilemma. Do I pay AU$118.15 for a flawed 'security' application that is designed to protect me from threats that do not seem to exist; or do I take sensible precautions like keeping my computer behind a firewall and staying up to date with OS X patches?"No matter which side of the OS X security/virus/malware debate you stand on, a situation like this undeniably brings these topics back into light with a new perspective. Feel free to discuss in the comments, but keep it clean; don't make me come in there and separate you.
Update on the breakout dock
C.K. posted about the iPod breakout dock back in Nov. - essentially it's a DIY tool for testing "signal interactions with a microcontroller and an iPod." While I don't understand what exactly the tool does much better than C.K., it looks like hack a day noticed that the mastermind of the project, Panocamera.com, has made a bit of progress. The iPod breakout dock has "achieved relatively painless interaction with a BS2 microcontroller," which to my crude knowledge of hacking sounds like they're slowly figuring out how to build a device and write the code to make an iPod control various kinds of devices - maybe, some day, not just the accessories we're used to from the likes of Belkin and Kensington. No word, however, on whether I'll some day be able to use my iPod nano to wirelessly shut my blinds or start up a car.The one thing I can tell is that the project is chugging along and has a ways to go. If any TUAW readers who understand a little better what's going on here, feel free to educate the rest of the class in the comments.
OS X for Hackers at Heart
I've never thought of myself as a 'hacker.' I have never terminaled into a government computer to see what I could see, I have never played tic tac toe with a mainframe at NORAD, nor have I ever called the Pope. All of that might be changing thanks to Syngress Publishing's newest book, 'OS X for Hackers at Heart.'They say that this book is for anyone who wants to get a little more out of Tiger, and isn't afraid to dig and root around (ha! Get it? That's a little Unix type joke there). I'm sure that shortly after reading this book your friends and family alike will declare you 1337.
