Category Archives: reverse engienering

34C3: Using Your Car As Video Game Controller

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Despite the presence of human drivers, modern cars are controlled by computers. In his talk at the Chaos Communication Congress [Guillaume Heilles] and [P1kachu] demonstrate the potential of taking control of a car’s computer. This of course leads to the natural conclusion of emulate an Xbox controller and using the car to play computer games.

His research was limited by the fact that the only cars they had access to were the daily drivers of different members of [P1kachu]’s family, which meant that all tinkering had to be strictly non-destructive. Despite this, they achieved impressive results and deliver a great …read more

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34C3: Fitbit Sniffing and Firmware Hacking

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If you walked into a gym and asked to sniff exercise equipment you would get some mighty strange looks. If you tell hackers you’ve sniffed a Fitbit, you might be asked to give a presentation. [Jiska] and [DanielAW] were not only able to sniff Bluetooth data from a run-of-the-mill Fitbit fitness tracker, they were also able to connect to the hardware with data lines using test points etched right on the board. Their Fitbit sniffing talk at 34C3 can be seen after the break. We appreciate their warning that opening a Fitbit will undoubtedly void your warranty since Fitbits don’t …read more

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80’s Smartwatch Finally Plays Tetris

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While the current generation of smartwatches have only been on the market for a few years, companies have been trying to put a computer on your wrist since as far back as the 80s with varying degrees of success. One such company was Seiko, who in 1984 unveiled the UC-2000: a delightfully antiquated attempt at bridging the gap between wristwatch and personal computer. Featuring a 4-bit CPU, 2 KB of RAM, and 6 KB of ROM, the UC-2000 was closer to a Tamagotchi than its modern day counterparts, but at least it could run BASIC.

Ever since he saw the …read more

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The Art Of The Silicon Chip

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If you have followed the group of reverse engineers whose work on classic pieces of silicon we feature regularly here at Hackaday, you may well be familiar with the appearance of the various components that make up their gates and other functions. What you may not be familiar with, however, are the features that can occasionally be found which have no function other than the private amusement of the chip designers themselves. Alongside the transistors, resistors, and interconnects, there are sometimes little pieces of artwork inserted into unused spaces on the die, visible only to those fortunate enough to own …read more

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Amazing 3D-Scanner Teardown and Rebuild

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Pour yourself a nice hot cup of tea, because [iliasam]’s latest work on a laser rangefinder (in Russian, translated here) is a long and interesting read. The shorter version is that he got his hands on a broken laser security scanner, nearly completely reverse-engineered it, got it working again, put it on a Roomba that was able to map out his apartment, and then re-designed it to become a tripod-mounted, full-room 3D scanner. Wow.

The scanner in question has a spinning mirror and a laser time-of-flight ranger, and is designed to shut down machinery when people enter a “no-go” region. …read more

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Rebonding an IC to Save Tatakae! Big Fighter

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Preserving old arcade games is a niche pastime that can involve some pretty serious hacking skills. If the story here were just that someone pulled the chip from a game, took it apart, and figured out the ROM contents, that’d be pretty good. But the real story is way stranger than that.

Apparently, a bunch of devices were sent to a lab to be reverse engineered and were somehow lost. Nearly ten years later, the devices reappeared, and another group has taken the initiative to recover their contents. The chip in question was part of a 1989 arcade game called  …read more

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