Collaborate Disseminate
Reverse engineering a payphone doesn’t sound like a very interesting project, at least in the United States, where payphones were little more than ruggedized versions of residential phones with a …read more Continue reading Unexpectedly Interesting Payphone Gives Up Its Secrets
A year ago, we wrote about the discovery of treasure trove of original documentation from the development of the MOS 6502 by Jennifer Holdt-Winograd, daughter of the late Terry Holdt, the original program manager on the project. Now, Ms. Winograd has created a website to celebrate the 6502 and the …read more
Here’s a puzzler for you: If you’re phreaking something that’s not exactly a phone, are you still a phreak?
That question probably never crossed the minds of New Yorkers who were acoustically assaulted on the normally peaceful sidewalks of Manhattan over the summer by creepy sounds emanating from streetside WiFi kiosks. The auditory attacks caused quite a stir locally, leading to wild theories that Russian hackers were behind it all. Luckily, the mystery has been solved, and it turns out to have been part prank, part protest, and part performance art piece.
To understand the exploit, realize that New York …read more
Continue reading Manhattan Mystery of Creepy Jingles and Random Noises Solved
LinkNYC’s Wi-Fi and communication booths are taunting New Yorkers during a heatwave thanks to a clever prankster. Continue reading Pranksters Are Making LinkNYC Booths Play Ice Cream Van Music
The invention of the transistor ushered in a lot of technologies that we now take for granted, and one of the less-thought-about areas that it improved living conditions worldwide was by making the touch-tone phone possible. No longer would the world have to fuss with dials to make phone calls, they could simply push some buttons. This technology is still in use today, and it is possible to build external phone dialers that use these tones to make phone calls, as [SunFounder] demonstrates with his latest project.
The tones that a phone makes when a button is pressed correlate with …read more
Continue reading Automatic Phone Dialer Illuminates Inner Workings
In 1985, [Wim van Eck] published several technical reports on obtaining information the electromagnetic emissions of computer systems. In one analysis, [van Eck] reliably obtained data from a computer system over hundreds of meters using just a handful of components and a TV set. There were obvious security implications, and now computer systems handling highly classified data are TEMPEST shielded – an NSA specification for protection from this van Eck phreaking.
Methods of van Eck phreaking are as numerous as they are awesome. [Craig Ramsay] at Fox It has demonstrated a new method of this interesting side-channel analysis using readily …read more
As Internet security has evolved it has gotten easier to lock your systems down. Many products come out of the box pre-configured to include decent security practices, and most of the popular online services have wised up about encryption and password storage. That’s not to say that things are perfect, but as the computer systems get tougher to crack, the bad guys will focus more on the unpatchable system in the mix — the human element.
Ever since the days of the ancient Greeks, and probably before that, social engineering has been one option to get around …read more
Continue reading Social Engineering is on The Rise: Protect Yourself Now
We’re taking a close look at the security concepts in Mr. Robot episode 2, season 2. Continue reading Mr. Robot: Season 2 Episode 2 – digging into the details
If we were to express an official view of the what these guys did once they hacked into a Target store’s PA system, we’d have to go with definitely uncool. However, it’s good to know that phone phreaking and good ol’ social engineering isn’t dead yet. Many of us got our start by playing with the systems around us.
Anyone could call into a Target store and request to be transferred to the PA’s extension code, which was the same everywhere. If the person transferring the call wasn’t quick on their feet, the caller would then be patched directly into …read more
Continue reading Social Engineering Your Way To The Target PA System
