Hasta La Gadget!

When we visited BeatBots’ San Francisco headquarters a few days back, the company’s co-founder Marek Michalowski was a bit hush-hush when it came to discussing the future of Keepon, not saying much beyond alluding to upcoming updates for the move-busting little ‘bot. He was, however, more than happy to talk about hacking the beat-monitoring toy, something the company had in mind when it first designed the consumer-friendly toy. “We felt it was important to allow people to hack it and be able to do more things with the toy than it can do out of the box,” Michalowski told us.

The company left the toy’s I2C bus open, so interested parties can easily manipulate My Keepon by way of microcontrollers like Arduino and its ilk. We’ve already seen some crafty individuals get the robot to do their bidding, something that’s only likely to increase when Michalowski releases a guide for hacking My Keepon in the very near future. In the meantime, click through after the break to see the robotics PhD discuss Keepon hacks. A YouTube full of choreographed “Thriller” Keepon videos surely can’t be that far off.

Continue reading BeatBots co-founder Marek Michalowski encourages the world to hack Keepon (video)

Filed under: Robots

BeatBots co-founder Marek Michalowski encourages the world to hack Keepon (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Nov 2012 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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4G LTE might be a thing of beauty for mobile users who love a good and fast internet connection while on the road, but according to a document filed with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a laptop and a software-defined radio unit costing about $650 is all it takes to take down a 4G network within a reasonably-size radius.

It turns out that every mobile phone grid is vulnerable to this technique, including FirstNet, which is the emergency communications network that was designed and implemented after 9/11, but 4G networks are said to be especially vulnerable to the hack. The authors of the document say that “it’s relatively easy to do” by anyone with basic communications engineering skills, and if you were to spend just a bit more on a cheap power amplifier, you could take down a region as large as the state of New York.

If 4G LTE networks were to be compromised, existing 3G and 2G networks would still operate, but seeing how these older network technologies are gradually being phased out, there soon won’t be a backup for a downed 4G network. Of course, any radio frequency can be “jammed” if a transmitter sends a signal at the same frequency with enough power, but knowing that it can happen to a 4G LTE network across an entire state is a little disconcerting.

While the authors say that anyone could do this, it would require technical knowledge of the complexity of the LTE standard. However, those standards are actually openly published, which means that “any communications engineer would be able to figure this stuff out.” And all they would need is less than $1,000 to make it happen. Both Qualcomm and Ericsson, which are companies heavily invested in LTE networks, have yet to comment on the matter.

[via Technology Review]

4G LTE networks vulnerable to easy takedown hack is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s not a good day for a number of Origin users, as we’re getting news that accounts are being hijacked by some of the more unsavory people of the world. Eurogamer first reported on the breach earlier today, but it seems these hijackings have been going on for at least a few days now. NeoGAF user Shaneus – one of the users who had their account stolen – posted a selection of Electronic Arts forum threads that show other users running into problems when trying to log in to their account.

Apparently, most or all of these members received an email from Origin customer support claiming that their username, password, and/or email address on file had all be changed. Naturally, that makes it a bit hard to recover the account in question, and many users who have been affected seem to be having a difficult time reclaiming their account. In other words, it may not be a bad idea to change your password as soon as you can.

Since EA requires an Origin account for a lot of its games, there could be a decent number of dormant accounts that have been stolen. If you created an Origin account for the sole purpose of playing a game like Battlefield 3 but haven’t signed in for a while, it couldn’t hurt to attempt a login to make sure that you still have control over your account. EA made a statement to Eurogamer, but unfortunately the company didn’t say anything that’s actually worthwhile, only stating that it takes security questions seriously and that anyone who can’t access their account should get in touch with Origin Help or talk to EA’s customer experience group at help.ea.com.

Obviously, if your account has been hijacked and you’ve used your Origin username and password for other online identities, you should change those as soon as possible. We’ll update when we hear anything of substance from EA, but in the meantime, keep an eye on those accounts! Has your Origin account been hijacked or is everything still in order for you?

EA Origin users fall victim to account hijacking is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A Skype security flaw could allow rogue users to seize control of your account using nothing more than your email address, thanks to subpar recovery policies that can be easily gamed. The exploit depends on Skype’s policy of reminding new sign-ups of any existing usernames they have previously registered, when they attempt to re-register using the same email address. According to The Next Web, with a minor amount of tinkering, it’s possible to reset another user’s password and thus grab hold of their account.

Although a signed-in user will be able to see when somebody else attempts the hack, they would need to react fast in order to actually prevent themselves from being locked out. If they were not logged in at the time, or not paying sufficient attention, then they could have their Skype credentials usurped – along with any credit on that account – without them even realizing it had happened.

Skype is apparently conducting an “internal investigation” into the loophole, though for now there’s no official comment on when it might be closed off. The hack was first reported on a Russian forum roughly two months ago, it’s said, with the person responsible for discovering the exploit claiming to have told Skype about it with no apparent change in recovery security.

For the moment, the best advice is to change your registered email in the Skype settings to something that might not be associated with your account. That reduces the likelihood, though we’ll need to see a change in how accounts are handled by Skype itself before the hack is closed down for good.

Update: More complete instructions for the workaround can be found here, courtesy of Reddit:

Log in on skype.com
Go to the profile, click Edit and add an email address an attacker won’t guess. (Or your-email+something@gmail.com if you’re using Gmail)
Click Save
Click Edit again, set the new address as Primary
Click Save, enter the password and click the Enter button
Delete the old email

Update 2: Skype has given us the following statement:

“We have had reports of a new security vulnerability issue. As a precautionary step we have temporarily disabled password reset as we continue to investigate the issue further. We apologise for the inconvenience but user experience and safety is our first priority”

Skype hack steals accounts with nothing more than your email is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you only have a cassette player in your car, you probably bought a cassette adapter to connect your mp3 player or phone.  This neat hack by the clever Kipkay will help you keep up with the times without shelling out a lot of money by turning this:

Into… (drumroll, please…) this:

The hack involves taking the Bluetooth transmitter from a (used) Bluetooth headset and connecting it with the electronics inside the adapter:

I wish Kipkay provided an alternative way of making the Bluetooth transmitter’s controls accessible, because that’s an equally crucial part of the hack. Otherwise it seems like a straightforward project.

[via Kipkay]