Getting MIDI Under Control

When [Mr. Sobolak] started his DIY Midi Fighter he already had experience with the MIDI protocol, and because it is only natural once you have mastered something to expand on the success and build something more impressive, more useful, and more button-y. He is far from rare in this regard. …read more

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Video: Hacking the Extraterrestrial Internet – Where Fiction Meets Reality

Explore the Tech Behind the Interplanetary Internet!
Video and Slide Deck from EH-Net Live! June 2019
Normal SciFi glosses over a glaring problem with comms through the vastness of space… The Internet, and more specifically the TCP/IP protocol su… Continue reading Video: Hacking the Extraterrestrial Internet – Where Fiction Meets Reality

Medtronic Defibrillators Have Critical Flaws, Warns DHS

The unpatched vulnerabilities exist in 20 products made by the popular Medtronics medical device manufacturer, including defibrillators and home patient monitoring systems. Continue reading Medtronic Defibrillators Have Critical Flaws, Warns DHS

Drone Gives Up Its Wireless Secrets To Zigbee Sniffer

There’s something thrilling about decoding an unknown communications protocol. You start with a few clues, poke at the problem with some simple tools, and eventually work your way up to that first breakthrough that lets you crack the code. It can be frustrating, but when you eventually win, it can be very rewarding.

It seems that [Jason] learned this while decoding the wireless conversation between his mass-market quad and its controller. The quad in question, a Yuneec Q500, is one of those mid-range, ready-to-fly drones that’s targeted at those looking to get in the air easily and take some cool …read more

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Home Router…, or Trojan Horse?

Home Router…, Trojan Horse? The world of cybersecurity is full of stories of technology secretly encroaching on our privacy. The most common attack comes from malware that we enable hackers to store on our computers or mobile devices. Most of us … Continue reading Home Router…, or Trojan Horse?

Spanning The Tree : Dr Radia Perlman & Untangling Networks

As computer networks get bigger, it becomes increasingly hard to keep track of the flow of data over this network. How do you route data, making sure that the data is spread to all parts of the network? You use an algorithm called the spanning tree protocol — just one of the contributions to computer science of a remarkable engineer, Dr. Radia Perlman. But before she created this fundamental Internet protocol, she also worked on LOGO, the first programming language for children, creating a dialect for toddlers.

Born in 1952, Perlman was a prodigy who excelled in math and science, …read more

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This Thermal Printer has Serious Game

[Dhole], like the fox, isn’t the first to connect his computer to a Game Boy printer but he has done a remarkable job of documenting the process so well that anyone can follow. The operation is described well enough that it isn’t necessary to scrutinize his code, so don’t be put off if C and Rust are not your first choices. The whole thing is written like a story in three chapters.

The first chapter is about hacking a link cable between two Game Boys. First, he explains the necessity and process of setting the speed of his microcontroller, a …read more

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Voltmeter Speaks MQTT Without Libraries

[Emilio Ficara] [built himself an Internet-connected MQTT multimeter](http://ficara.altervista.org/) (translated from Italian by robots). Or maybe we should say that [Emilio Ficara] undertook a long string of cool hacks that ended up in a WiFi-enabled multimeter, because the destination isn’t nearly as interesting as the voyage.

The multimeter, a DT-4000ZC, has a serial output but instead of transferring the data directly, it sends which cells on the LCD screen need to be activated. For testing along the way, [Emilio] used his own USB-serial-to-ESP01 dongle, which sounds like a useful tool to have around if you’re debugging an AT command session. He …read more

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