Hasta La Gadget!

You had to know something interesting would come out of the quarter million diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks just, well, leaked late on Sunday, and the New York Times has picked out a doozie for us. As it turns out, that big brouhaha in China surrounding the hacking of Gmail accounts was actually a state-authorized attack. Such was the report from a Chinese informant working for the US embassy, and the disclosure goes on to say that it was part of a “coordinated campaign of computer sabotage,” reaching a wide net of targets, including American government machines, American private businesses, and… the Dalai Lama. Hey, China’s hardly the first country to ever engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage (ahem, Stuxnet), but we can’t say we’re not disappointed. Let’s keep it classy from here on out, alright guys?

WikiLeaks: Chinese Politburo responsible for Google hacking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember that Kinect hack how-to? A key figure in the story was the use of a USB analyzer that was plugged in-between the Kinect and the Xbox to pick up on USB traffic and pull out a log that could be used for hacking. Well, there’s a new ‘OpenVizsla’ project on KickStarter that’s aiming to build open source hardware that can put this typically expensive tech ($1,400+) in the hands of more hackers, who use the hardware for anything from jailbreaking locked-down devices to building Linux drivers for hardware. The project was actually started by hackers “bushing” and “pytey,” who have worked on hacking the Wii and the iPhone, respectively. They’ve already raised a good chunk of change for the project in pledges, with backing from folks like Stephen Fry and DVD Jon helping out the momentum, and hopefully we’ll be seeing the next generation of hacks enabled by OpenVizsla and its brood before too long.

Continue reading OpenVizsla hopes to bring USB sniffing to the everyhacker

OpenVizsla hopes to bring USB sniffing to the everyhacker originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Nov 2010 13:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh Hexxeh, you sly tease. Yesterday, we saw the Chromium OS impresario post up an image of Google’s browser-centric environment running around inside Apple’s iPad and today he’s followed it up with a video. Unfortunately, it’s not the best performance demo in the world and is all too brief, but it does show touch sensitivity (kinda) functioning and — the strongest evidence that we’re no longer using iOS — a mouse cursor! Join us after the break as we follow the fascinating journey of an attempted Spotify Extension installation in Chrome.

[Thanks, Aaron]

Continue reading iPad and Chromium OS dance on video

iPad and Chromium OS dance on video originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The two new Arduinos should spell good things for the Arduino heads out there, but meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks… Secret Labs is launching its .NET-friendly Netduino Plus, which adds Ethernet and microSD to a regular Netduino board (which in itself is a sort of high powered, Visual Studio-compatible Arduino, with a 32-bit 48MHz ARM7 processor, instead of Arduino’s 8-bit number, but pin compatible with Arduino “shields”). Unfortunately, the networking code eats of a good majority of the board’s already meager code storage and RAM, but you can always flash the original Netduino’s firmware on here if you’d like. Right now the board is in a “public beta” while the firmware gets some extra tweaks, but you should be able to drop $60 on the final model by the holidays.

Netduino Plus earns you Ethernet and microSD, an approving nod from Microsoft originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been just a few days since we broke news of the HDCP master key crack — a rogue unlocking of the code that keeps HD content under strict control. Now Intel has independently confirmed to both Fox News and CNET that the code is indeed the genuine article. According to company spokesman Tom Waldrop, “It does appear to be a master key,” adding that “What we have confirmed through testing is that you can derive keys for devices from this published material that do work with the keys produced by our security technology… this circumvention does appear to work.” Coming from the company that developed and propagated the protocol, that’s about as clear as you can get.

If Intel is worried about the potential damage to copyrighted material and a new flood of super high-quality pirated material, however, the company certainly isn’t showing it. “For someone to use this information to unlock anything, they would have to implement it in silicon — make a computer chip,” Waldrop told Fox News, and that chip would have to live on a dedicated piece of hardware — something Intel doesn’t think is likely to happen in any substantial way. Of course, like any major corporation, Intel seems prepared to duke things out in the legal arena should any super-rich hackers decide to do the unthinkable. So, to the Batcave then?

Confirmed: Intel says HDCP ‘master key’ crack is real originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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