Radio-activity... It's in the air for you and me...

se-kur-ih-tay

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:24:13 GMT

So I got an email from UTS (University Technology Services) at FIU regarding a compromised webserver. I have no clue if this is something I reported or if it's regarding a system I manage.

It has an incident number attached. I go into the bemuddled BMS Software (Big Muddled Shite?) service request tracking system and look it up. It's not valid.

I go to the IT Security Office website. The contact form leads to a default Microsoft IIS 404. I click on FAQ. It leads to a page stuffed with php errors that disclose local paths. The paths are very painfully Windows... d:\whatever...

I think I have seen perfect true irony in action :3

Unfortunately, I have not found any working contact info for the office other than their phone number -- business hours only -- and probably gone on Fridays.

Can I get a toilet plunger-tipped LART over here?

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:04:25 GMT

SPAM: "I heard your weenie needed strengthening."

Thank you guys, I'll never be able to look through my spam folder without inappropriate laughter again.

(If the video isn't available yet... come back in a few minutes. It's still transcodin'.)

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:54:41 GMT

Can anyone identify this logo? It's on the back of a German Anniversary clock I got for $4 at the Goodwill store.

Yes, I traced it over badly, but it kinda needed that to be readable. The letters appear to possibly be "BE".

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:39:52 GMT

We're selling a Xerox Phaser 8560 printer... I think the price was $600? These run new for $850. It's a Damn Fast solid ink printer that produces great text, graphics, and photo output that will never, ever, not in a million years bleed, fade, or run, even if you were to put your printouts down at the bottom of the bay for fishies to read.

Local pickup only please, for the love of Eris... this thing is heavy!!!

The latest firmware has been loaded. It connects via either Ethernet or USB, and will make the room smell like warm Crayola crayons! :3

It works perfectly.. we're just selling it because we don't use it enough. It gets bored and lonely.

Dear Apple:

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:24:39 GMT

I don't understand you.

I would apparently need to change the PSU in the Power Mac G4 tower I've got here to get it running. The PSU failed the voltage test and has Bad Caps in it.

If you read that Voltage Test page, you'll notice something odd. Well, at least it'll seem odd to you if you're used to the industry standard ATX platform like I am.

+24 volt standby power!

On an ATX, this is +5.

Needless to say, this makes drop-in replacement with a standard ATX PSU a no-go. Interestingly, the G3s do NOT use this +24 nonsense, so one could convert an atx psu to work with only minor mechanical work (pin swapping/splicing).

The +24 rail is rated for a mighty 4.05 amps of load! I think this was to power some LCD monitors through the weird and wacky roundish DVI/WTF port these machines have.

Ah well. I've got a source for more, at least. What a weird machine.

Speaking of weird machines, I need some +24 to play with my cubes. They're not very powerful, but they're a stunningly awesome work of modern industrial design. The modern Mac Mini is the more powerful but terribly nerfed version! For instance, getting inside requires Scary Prying and stuff. For these, see that crossbar on the bottom? It's a handle. Flip the cube upside down, press down on that bar, and it pops up, releasing two latches that hold the core of the cube in place. Lift the core out by that handle, and you have immediate access to *everything*. The large ovalish hole in the top is the upper end of a convection cooling duct running top to bottom through the cube, allowing air to flow through the system and over the heatsinks without the use of a fan. The same sort of cooling design was used on the iMac G3 slotload, using the CRT monitor's convection to pull cool air over the computery bits.

Sure, the blowers Apple uses nowadays may be quiet... but I'd prefer they not be there at all. :3

Good times. Serious good times.

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:05:20 GMT

Yasumicon's under way. I've been here since 8 AM... A/V wharrgarbl. I was genuinely terrified all morning of what it was going to turn out like and... arrrgh. The guy who's helping us out set things up in massive overkill so he's got like a kilowatt of sound and 48 mixer channels and five mics on the drums and ten miles of duct tape on the floor and DESU.

I do have a number of other volunteers to help out with A/V this year, thank Eris.

Also, that old Maxtor I was fighting with earlier, that's back in its rightful owner's home along with a 1 terrabyte Seagate'd iMac.

Our snack panel and bad anime panel were awesome. The bad anime panel overflowed the room... massively.

mentaiko is a weird flavor, granted

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:00:26 GMT

wtf is this thing DOING? attacking by singing?

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:33:34 GMT

I think I have it all figured out. I'm gonna say the differences between the Blue Neon universe and the one we live in are a result of someone having gone back in time via FnordTran and having played a funky groove on a Tenori-On in front of the creature that has been recently discovered as the missing link between ape and man.

Yep. One more mystery of pseudoscience solved.

I'm charging the battery on my Icom IC-R3. I'll miss being able to watch TV on that little frobnitz... ah well, it makes a great VHF/UHF receiver, and a somewhat, uh, acceptable one for HF as well.

Any word on when portable TVs that grok the horrible 8vsb / MPEG2 will become reasonably affordable? urrrrrk.

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:37:15 GMT

Yeah.. you see this shelf above my desk here?

It just self-destructed and dumped everything right onto the ROCK SOLID old IBM Model M keyboard below.

I'd been meaning to rewire everything anyway to route the audio through my new EQ...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:34:43 GMT

Frank Brogan is considering running for chancellor of the Florida state university system.

If you may remember, he was vice governor alongside Jeb Bush (Jeb!).

I do not find him suitable for the job. I wonder if I should piss him off with another comic?

Back in 2000, I seriously ticked him off with this...

I e-mailed it directly to Jeb back then. :D Sorry for the penmanship.

So yeah, Frank... NICE JOB you did there with FAU! Nowadays we call it Find Another University...

maxtor is special

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:45:11 GMT

Short-bus special.

This is after about three years of use, on a drive out of an iMac Core Duo system that one of our staff had been using. He brought it in and I've got its drive out, hooked up to the music server, using dd_rhelp to clone it to a usb external drive (Samsung drive in an Iomega case).

Thankfully, no evil Maxtor Melody...

It's peppered with bad sectors, but it's never attempted a reallocate! Great job! It shows a buttload of sectors *pending* reallocation, though.

The guy asked me if I could reformat his drive and put it back in service after recovery... I'm... not touching that with a twenty foot spork. That drive's TOTALLY unreliable at this point. I love how it has an uncorrected read error at LBA 0x00000000! FAIL

fnord@musicbox:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdd
[sudo] password for fnord: 
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Maxtor DiamondMax 10 family (ATA/133 and SATA/150)
Device Model:     Maxtor 6L160M0
Serial Number:    L39EB97G
Firmware Version: BACE1GE0
User Capacity:    163,928,604,672 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   7
ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 0
Local Time is:    Mon Jun 29 19:37:19 2009 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x02)	Offline data collection activity
					was completed without error.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine completed
					without error or no self-test has ever 
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		 (  30) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					No Conveyance Self-test supported.
					Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (  62) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0x0021)	SCT Status supported.
					SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   210   208   063    Pre-fail  Always       -       16125
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   246   246   000    Old_age   Always       -       14991
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   164   164   063    Pre-fail  Always       -       908
  6 Read_Channel_Margin     0x0001   253   253   100    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0027   253   245   187    Pre-fail  Always       -       35455
  9 Power_On_Minutes        0x0032   230   230   000    Old_age   Always       -       648h+20m
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x002b   253   252   157    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x002b   253   252   223    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   242   242   000    Old_age   Always       -       4674
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0032   046   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       29
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x000a   251   251   000    Old_age   Always       -       34091
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0008   253   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0008   164   164   000    Old_age   Offline      -       908
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0008   253   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0008   199   199   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
201 Soft_Read_Error_Rate    0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
202 TA_Increase_Count       0x000a   167   167   000    Old_age   Always       -       161
203 Run_Out_Cancel          0x000b   250   250   180    Pre-fail  Always       -       2881
204 Shock_Count_Write_Opern 0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
205 Shock_Rate_Write_Opern  0x000a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
207 Spin_High_Current       0x002a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
208 Spin_Buzz               0x002a   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
209 Offline_Seek_Performnce 0x0024   234   234   000    Old_age   Offline      -       230
210 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
211 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
212 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   253   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
ATA Error Count: 5716 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
	CR = Command Register [HEX]
	FR = Features Register [HEX]
	SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
	SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
	CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
	CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
	DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
	DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
	ER = Error register [HEX]
	ST = Status register [HEX]
Powered_Up_Time is measured from power on, and printed as
DDd+hh:mm:SS.sss where DD=days, hh=hours, mm=minutes,
SS=sec, and sss=millisec. It "wraps" after 49.710 days.

Error 5716 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 7775 hours (323 days + 23 hours)
  When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was in an unknown state.

  After command completion occurred, registers were:
  ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
  -- -- -- -- -- -- --
  40 51 00 00 00 00 a0  Error: UNC at LBA = 0x00000000 = 0

  Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
  CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC   Powered_Up_Time  Command/Feature_Name
  -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --  ----------------  --------------------
  c8 00 08 f0 e3 14 e0 00      00:36:59.019  READ DMA
  27 00 00 00 00 00 e0 00      00:36:59.018  READ NATIVE MAX ADDRESS EXT
  ec 00 00 00 00 00 a0 00      00:36:58.998  IDENTIFY DEVICE
  ef 03 45 00 00 00 a0 00      00:36:58.979  SET FEATURES [Set transfer mode]
  27 00 00 00 00 00 e0 00      00:36:58.978  READ NATIVE MAX ADDRESS EXT

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]


SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

fnord@musicbox:~$ 


And here's some dmesg:

[1098708.741256] ata3: EH complete
[1098718.774572] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] 320173056 512-byte hardware sectors (163929 MB)
[1098718.774595] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[1098718.774598] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[1098718.774624] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[1098718.774655] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] 320173056 512-byte hardware sectors (163929 MB)
[1098718.774670] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[1098718.774672] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[1098718.774697] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[1098882.276728] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[1098882.276737] ata3.00: BMDMA2 stat 0x80c0009
[1098882.276746] ata3.00: cmd 25/00:00:c8:79:2f/00:02:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 262144 in
[1098882.276747]          res 51/40:00:df:7a:2f/00:01:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
[1098882.276751] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[1098882.276754] ata3.00: error: { UNC }
[1098882.411238] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100
[1098882.411251] ata3: EH complete
[1098886.454990] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] 320173056 512-byte hardware sectors (163929 MB)
[1098886.455013] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[1098886.455016] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[1098886.455042] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdd] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:03:44 GMT

I'd love to know how my parents managed this one...

The Yaesu FT-2800 has serious massive audio. Like, four watts of it. Connect it to a big speaker, and you can annoy everyone in the house with ease! However, after an attempt was made to record audio on the radio by connecting its speaker out to a soundcard's line in with a straight through cable, this four watts of audio decreased to zero. My brother was JUST able to extract a faint trace of extremely distorted audio at like, microphone level, from the speaker jack...

The audio amplifier inside the radio is a Sanyo LA4425. I started by probing that - it checked out. A good solid 5vrms of audio was coming out! I checked the coupling cap, that was ok too. I traced the audio right up to the jack, all good. The ground was open.

The ground goes through a series inductor of unknown value. This prevents coupling of RF out of, or into, the radio via the audio line, by presenting a high impedance at frequencies too high to be of any audio interest. I found this was on *groan* the back side of the board, so this required removing about 15 screws, desoldering the SO-239 (two irons at once!), and re-greasing the rf driver/final amplifier pills with heatsink goo on reassembly. The new stuff that RADIO JANK sells looks like chunky spoilt milk. Ew.

Well, upon getting the board out, I found the problem: The inductor was gone.

Not blown.

Not open.

Gone. Gone without a trace. The solder balls on the PCB were rounded and shiny.

I'm guessing there was a large amount of dc current passed across the inductor that caused it to heat up until it nicely flowed the solder... then fell right off the board, and out of the radio via the ventilation holes on the top the next time it was handled. The placement of those vent holes is hilariously stupid for a radio that's supposed to be all sorts of mil-spec rated - they're on the TOP of the radio, down in channels in the heatsink, and will direct any spilled liquids straight into the radio and onto the back of the board. FAILZ0R3D! I doubt the Yaesu would be as resillient in this regard as the infamous Chocolate GE Phoenix SX.

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:09:48 GMT

After confirming reception of spam from Azerbaijan (.az), I had the marvellous idea for... a spam QSL card system.

Basically, the way it would work is once you confirm via SpamCop report that you have received spam from a certain country, you could exchange QSL cards with that country's spam QSL bureau.

... This is so horrible and wonderful all at once that it simply must be done.

ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!!

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:57:47 GMT

My fuckwit neighbors in the quad house across the street appear to be gone.

Back in 1999, this Hispanic family moved out of a house across the street.

The house had new owners temporarily, who did very strange things with it. One day I asked my parents for a ride home from school, and they couldn't do it because we'd been *triple-parked* into our driveway. I came back via MDTA bus and found the entire neighborhood jammed with cars, a box truck outside that house, and a very loud party going on inside with hundreds of people. This ended when the house's electrical system caught fire, and everyone just kinda ran. When the smoke cleared, I looked into the house through a door that had been left open, and saw that all the interior walls except for those around one bathroom had been removed. The central HVAC unit was just sorta sitting in one corner on its side on the floor, surrounded by condensate; if the power had still been on, cold air would have been blowing out of it. The DJ had hastily departed and taken his equipment with him, but had left behind *thousands* of flyers for some event taking place at another address in Kendall that sounded residential as well.

A pretty nice couple was going to move in back in 2001. They'd paid a mint to have the house fixed up, new interior and roof... and then they vanished in about April. I think the husband got a job somewhere else. He was working for Piper Aircraft at the time.

Around then, this other family moved into the neighborhood and started buying up many, many properties on ARMs, including that one.

Since like 2002, we'd had to put up with their nonsense day and night. The house had been purchased on an adjustable rate mortgage by this one family who had done the same thing with literally every house that went up for sale in this neighborhood; the rates were very low at the time, and they were making some profit off of renting the houses out.

They were, however, really shady. They'd rent to pretty much anyone who called up and met them with cash in hand for the first month.

Eventually, as ARMs reset, they started ditching the properties one by one, including the house they used to live in, two houses down from mine. They sectioned off one of their houses, across the street from me, into four seperate apartments, and put a shed out back that might have been rented out as a fifth. They lived in one of the apartments, and rented the others out.

The quad magically gathered some of the most unsavory residents imaginable. We had the Harley-tards, a couple of younger guys who owned Harley V-twin powered bikes and apparently had some affliction that kept them from ever shifting out of first gear. They'd circle the block like eight times whenever coming or going, which happened at all hours. With the engines at near redline, it would create a really terrible noise that would shake windows in their frames and could wake the dead. This continued until one of them struck the speed limit sign down the street and died, and the other one moved out of the Quad.

There was one couple who we'd always see there, a douchebag guy and a twatwaffle girl, who would have endless screaming arguments and lovely sessions of domestic abuse in the driveway in the middle of the night. This was on a nightly basis. Such a happy couple.

There was also this tiny lady with blonde hair and a Ford Expedition who would always be coming and going during the day. Like, she'd come home, then leave again within about five minutes. Whenever she left, she backed the SUV out without looking, very rapidly. She nearly creamed my uncle twice, ran me off the road doing it once, and then finally had the rear end of that thing removed when she backed right into someone going by in a Honda Civic. They were uninjured, but their car was a total loss. She eventually got a new black SUV, and after some time of being under law enforcement surveillance, left the Quad.

Finally, in the very end, it was a total mystery... there were entire days of banging, thumping, buzzing car stereo, people getting themselves drunk until they passed out in lawn chairs on the driveway... and then came the weird move-out (best I can tell, that's what it was).

At some point last year, there was one guy living there who drove a Mustang. He always seemed quite intent on trying to steal my car, but didn't really know how to steal a car. One night I was coming home around like 2 AM and he was waiting in his driveway in his Failstang. As I passed and went to turn into my driveway, he came up and tried to slam into my car from behind... but I dodged him, ran over a plant in my swale, which recovered within a week, and took off again. I drove around through some of the local streets, turning the corners as fast as I could (which is really fast, with that car), and he kept chasing me... until he wound up kinda parked in the front of an empty house about a mile away. I didn't stop or really even slow down. I just got the fuck out of there. I didn't see him for a long time after that, until he appeared briefly, buzzing around the area on a pocket bike.

Last week, there was this frenzied flurry of bizarre activity. Everyone was coming and going 24/7 in all sorts of vehicles, most not street-legal, including pocket bikes, ATCs, and Go-peds. I recall seeing them carrying a television on an ATC at one point. I'm guessing this was them moving out.

Then, suddenly.. there was silence... followed by a dump truck and crew hauling away bits of the shed out back until well into the wee hours of the night.

The house now stands with a door open into one of the apartments. It smells REALLY bad, like moldy avocados, and the smell hangs in the air heavily all around. I even noticed it wafting into my laundry room. I think the Quad's roof must have failed and soaked the place. I looked up the property info from Miami-Dade County, and it's currently owned by some German bank. The power's off, but the meter's in the socket and my volt-pen shows power present up to the meter -- I don't really know what to make of that. I have the feeling they might have taken the panel with them when they left. (Yeah, I don't know why they'll do this, but I do see a lot of the local handymen will buy used panels to resell them and their breakers to homeowners who probably would be a lot better off getting NEW ones...)

And thus... the neighborhood is far cleaner and more peaceful once again.

hey intarwebs

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:41:45 GMT

Has anyone familar with PIC programming ever done the silly voltage-fuzz attack against the PIC protection fuse bits*?

Supposedly, on the PIC16F***, it worked like this:

Craig Lee [clee--at--ATTCANADA--dot--NET] says

I have found cracking procedure for the following chips:

16c54,16c55,16c56,16c57,16c58,16c61,16c62,16c64,16c65,16c71,16c73,
16c74,16c84

The procedure supposedly gives you some bits of the instruction word and you are left to select one of two possible instructions by context. Also, the procedures seem to be generic and should work on all 12bit and 14bit chips.

The [older versions of the] pic chip (pic16C84) can in fact have it's program and data memory read after the config fuses have been set to code protection on. Try the following:

* Write some code to the chip with the code protection set to "ON".
* Read back to verify that the protection has indeed come on.
* Now set Vdd ( pin 14 ) to Vpp-0.5v, (Programming voltage less 0.5V).
* Set config fuse to "OFF" and reprogram config fuse. Ignore error messages.
* Now set Vdd back to normal, +5v.
* Power off the programmer.
* Wait 10 to 20 sec to allow the charge on the cells to fall back to 5 volts.
* Power back on the programmer. (VDD at + 5V)
* Read the pic....

and hey presto, data in unprotected format should now be available.

The device in question for my project is a PIC18F442, and there's supposedly some money in being able to dump it to modify its program (the sort of stupid modification that would involve simply inserting a JMP to skip a test).

I've heard rumors that Microchip has improved security over the years, but it can never be perfect!!

One of my thoughts involved possibly fuzzing the chip erase process (which still works to factory-reset the PIC no matter what the fuse bits* are set to). Assuming the chip does something like this:

Step 1: Erase fuse bits to remove copy/write/etc. protection and reenable onboard oscillator if applicable.
Step 2: POSSIBLE PAUSE HERE -- Erase data memory, reset, or any other number of useless processes!
Step 3: Erase program memory

It'd be vulnerable to one hell of a convenient timing attack! Send erase chip command, wait n clock cycles, kill power, wait a few seconds, restore power and dump!

Maybe a combination of that and a limited voltage/current attack would be useful?

* This is what Atmel calls them on an AVR; I don't know what they're REALLY called on a pic.

baby light my fire

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:38:48 GMT

Hmm...

3G Modem card from an Amazon.com Kindle 2:

(The AUX antenna port is not used?)

Some random mini-pci express wifi card:

Are you pondering what I'm pondering? XD

Sun, 31 May 2009 02:11:14 GMT

hmm. I think i want a prc-319. It's green!

Fri, 29 May 2009 14:21:32 GMT

There are some good canned coffees in the world.

This is not one of them.

Nice try, at least, Coca-Cola Corporation. Call up the guys over at Suntory or something and ask them how to make one that doesn't suck. XD

WHY does this contain sodium bicarbonate? o.O

The FIU Frequencies Post!

Wed, 27 May 2009 19:22:35 GMT

466.8875: Appears to be A/V (Graham Center?)
460.50625: -- Nevermind, this is an MDFR channel
466.88125: "Channel 3" on the new radios CSO uses. Purpose unknown. Very low traffic, at least for now...

1050 cps tone yeaaarrrrgggghhhhhhhh

Wed, 27 May 2009 17:27:00 GMT

After all the bad weather we got yesterday, the SAGE ENDEC was drooling EAS log all over the floor, and had run out of paper *hard* -- as in, it had printed like five alerts on top of each other at the end of the last 1/4 inch of paper, then ejected the end of the roll right onto the floor. I was reloading the little tiny internal printer from hell* when I got SAGED right in the face with a weather alert! The amazingly loud 1050 tone made me jump across the hallway and bonk a door with my bottom. XD

Here's what it looks like when it's, uh, saging. I'd never seen this in person before.

First, the loud-ass tones blast out of the tiny speaker on the front panel - the 1050 tone (or, I presume, the EAS attention tone), then the 1200 baud AFSK data packets. Once it gets a good solid decode on all three packets, the printer begins to slowly emit Sagedrool, and the digital recorder starts, accompanied by an odd screen that appears to let you do some things like delay or cancel retransmission. Once the EOM (end of message) signal comes in, the SAGE *loudly* sends its own attention tone, 1200 baud AFSK data packets, and replays the message off the digital recorder... accompanied by a really creepy looking countdown.

Finally, it sends its own EOM.

I guess I'd better get used to it. We've been getting some Really Scary Weather alerts daily now, and this usually continues on through our normal rainy season.

Also, here's the 4chan version. Remember, SAGE is not a magic bullet, and all that. Good luck trying to hit the maximum post count and kill a thread via saging. I'll be sitting here laughing at you if you try.

Mon, 25 May 2009 20:01:49 GMT

We're back from Jacon... I guess I should write some more about this but I'm lazy and have a sweetheart snuggled up next to me. XD

Fri, 22 May 2009 15:31:08 GMT

Oh no you di'int.

... Oh yes you did.

The Apple eMac...

Wed, 20 May 2009 22:28:08 GMT

This is not a service-accessible design. Here, you can play Find The Hard Drive with me...

http://twitpic.com/5kwnc

http://twitpic.com/5kws5

Find it yet?

The answer... you remove the fan assembly on the mac's butt (5 screws), the logic board assembly (9 screws), and pull on the whole mess, and it all comes out on a tray -- just like on the old iMac G3 slotloads.

And then, you take out the speakers and wear them as a hat.

http://twitpic.com/5kx5n

Wed, 20 May 2009 15:02:11 GMT

Boy, Allstate has an awful lot of sponsored text crap on the LJ main page today...

We're going to be doing our presentation... hopefully someone's got a computer with Office 2007, as that's what it was saved in...

Office 2007:

Seriously. It took effort to fail that hard.

Tue, 19 May 2009 08:34:52 GMT

I think it's a good time now for everyone to take into serious consideration who should be considered the best rapper ever!

This is serious business. XD