Category Archives: xerox

Xerox Alto CRTs Needed a Tiny Lightbulb to Function

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In the real world, components don’t work like we imagine they do. Wires have resistance, resistors have inductance, and capacitors have resistance. However, some designers like to take advantage of those imperfections, something our old friend [Ken Shirriff] noted when he was restoring the CRT of a Xerox Alto.

[Ken] tried to connect a Xerox monitor to the Alto and — since it was almost as old as the Alto — he wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work. What did surprise him, though, is that when he turned the monitor off, a perfect picture appeared for just a split second …read more

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Return to sender: military will send malware right back to you

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‘The threat could be a large nation-state or a 12-year-old’ – so is weaponizing malware and sending it back the right tactic? Continue reading Return to sender: military will send malware right back to you→

Bad Code Library Triggers Devil’s Ivy Vulnerability in Millions of IoT Devices

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Tens of millions of products ranging from airport surveillance cameras, sensors, networking equipment and IoT devices are vulnerable to a flaw that allows attacks to remotely gain control over devices or crash them. Continue reading Bad Code Library Triggers Devil’s Ivy Vulnerability in Millions of IoT Devices→

160,000 Network Printers Hacked

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It’s a pretty simple hack (in a rather grey-hat fashion), but it’s getting a LOT of media coverage and 160,000 network printers hacked just goes to show once again the whole Internet of Things chapter we are entering is pretty scary. Definitely a neat hack tho, utilising the mass scanning power of Zmap and scanning […]

The post 160,000…

Read the full post at darknet.org.uk

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Retrotechtacular: The Incredibly Difficult Task of Copying a Document

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It seems hard to imagine, but in the early part of the 20th century, there weren’t a lot of great options for creating copies of documents. The most common method was to use carbon paper to create multiple copies at once from a typewriter or a line printer. All that changed with a company called Haloid. Never heard of them? They later became the Xerox company.

The underlying technology dates back to 1938 (invented by a physicist who was also a lawyer). In 1944, they produced a practical copier and shortly thereafter sold the rights to Haloid. The Haloid company …read more

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Restoring The Groundbreaking Xerox Alto

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The Xerox Alto was a minicomputer that had a lot of firsts to its name: first GUI, first Ethernet connection, and first computer to use a laser printer. This is the computer that inspired Steve Jobs to build the Lisa. And this was built all back in 1973! So when [Ken Shirriff] and a team of other old-computer aficionados got their hands on one, you know they’d get to work.

[Ken]’s blog describes the start of what’s sure to be a long journey. It mostly describes the Alto system and locates its place in computer history, but there are some …read more

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blank email saying Attached Image pretending to come from a scanner or copier at your own domain – JS malware leads to Locky ransomware

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Last revised or Updated on: 18th March, 2016, 12:37 PMA blank email with the subject of  Attached Image pretending to come from a scanner, copier or multi-functional device at your own domain with a random numbered zip attachment is another one from the current bot runs which downloads Locky ransomware and a separate password stealer Now the nemucod  .JS downloader inside the zip contacts 2 different download locations and downloads Locky ransomware from 1 location and  a password stealer from the second location. This is really evil, first they steal your passwords, bank details and anything and everything else that they want, then they lock and encrypt all your files and demand a ransom of several hundred UK pounds or US … Continue reading → Continue reading blank email saying Attached Image pretending to come from a scanner or copier at your own domain – JS malware leads to Locky ransomware→