Gizmodo: hackable

Neuros Hackable Open-Source Set-Top Box Updated: OSD2

Kit Eaton — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:15:00 EDT

Neuros has taken another stab at the open-source set-top box market, and created the "Open Source Device 2." The original OSD was aimed at developers, but ended up finding use as a DVR. The new OSD2 has a more conventional box, can encode video at 720p in MPEG-4 format, H.264 D1 resolution (that's DVD quallity) from an analog video source, upscale video to 1080i or transcode it for a PMP. It's got a serial port, IRBlaster port, connections for Wi-Fi antenna, USB, LAN, HDMI, composite video and stereo audio, and even packs an SD port. It's shipped with a Linux-based firmware stack, but is completely open to user OS hacking. Available now for $250. [Linuxdevices]

California's Fastrak Toll System Tags Are Easily Hackable

Jason Chen — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:20:00 EDT

Bad news for California drivers (me) that use Fastrak (me) to get past toll roads and bridges fast (me). Hackaday reports that a security researcher named Nate Lawson presented information at the Black Hat conference in Vegas that demonstrated that the tags perform no authentication whatsoever, meaning a dude with a reader can go around a parking lot and read the IDs of every Fastrak transponder there. Even worse, there's unsecured over-the-air upgrades, so that same guy can overwrite tags at will, messing things up for everyone.

How do we fix this system? Here's the problem: the system is defined by California law. An update to the way things are done would take legislative action. [Nate] suggested one possible check that could be implemented to determine if the system was being exploited at this time: When a tag read fails now, the system takes a picture of your license plate so a human can determine what account it belongs to. The system could be updated to randomly take photos of cars that were reading correctly just to make sure the ID belongs to the car pictured.

And from the sound of it, it's pretty difficult to fix. [Hackaday]

Wired Previews Hackable Defcon 16 Badge

Matt Hickey — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:00:20 EDT

Wired got a sneak peek at one of the more fun aspects of this coming weekend's Defcon, the hackable badge. Last year's badge was hacked in just ten minutes, but it didn't have an SD card slot at USB support. The new card has fewer features than last year's but is more powerful. And it comes with a longer battery life, good news. But not everything is known, and that's kind of the point to these fun trinkets. [Wired]