Hack a bike · 3 February 2008 by Alex Beregszaszi
This is at least 3 years old news, but still very interesting. Members of the Chaos Computer Club managed to install a back door into 10% of the bicycles offered by Deutsche Bahn’s Call a Bike service.
This backdoor makes someone aware of it able to use the bikes for free.
I am wondering anyone managed hacking the similar bikes in Vienna or Barcelona.
Award Bootblock BIOS · 28 December 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Today I tried reviving an old system for LinuxBIOS hacking: a Chaintech Apogee 7NJL1 board, which was never used, still in the original packaging.
After the first boot an unusual screen appeared which told me the following: ROM checksum failure. It was the Award Bootblock BIOS, a recovery system, which reads the AWDFLASH utility and a BIOS image from a floppy. It took a bit to find an appropriate bios image, as the manufacturer quit the motherboard business and no longer operates a support website. Shame.
So I had a floppy prepared (found an old 3com install disk and finally found a use for my USB floppy drive :) and the AWDFLASH ulility started up, until the next screen: The program file’s BIOS-Lock String does not match with your system!
Funny, the image in the flash is corrupt and the recovery utility stops because the mainboard identification string – which resides in the corrupted region – does not match.
My final fix was to hack the AWDFLASH utility and disable the check. In version 8.22A (file size is 39180 bytes, md5: 003f66c91f25744168a9814ddf04b22c) at byte offset 0×7dba change 0xf9 to 0xf8.
(Technically, 0xf9 is set carry flag, while 0xf8 is clear carry flag. This flag is used in the code later to determine error conditions. We report no error in any case, but the message itself will be displayed.)
Apple uses Windows · 27 March 2007 by Alex Beregszaszi
Before I sold my iBook, I have been curious about the Apple EFI implementation. Downloaded the EFI firmware update for the MacMini and looked into the binaries, with my favourite first-line-reverse-engineering tool: string.
For my biggest surprise, it contained C:\... path names among those
“All Rights Reserved” fear Apple lines.
The path names definitely looked like, that the BIOS, err, I mean EFI was compiled on Windows.
Isn’t that depressing for an Apple fanboy? :)
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Creative passport · 13 June 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
Yesterday after the Match issue I had looked at everything in the house under UV light. Debit and credit cards, government IDs, etc.
The best was the Hungarian passport: it has musical notes on every second side where the VISAs go! Possibly the musical score of the first verse of our national hymn. (English translation of the hymn)
However, I was not brave enough to post pictures of it, dunno what the law regarding this is.
Magiczny Czek · 11 June 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
The Match supermarkets in Hungary are running now a game where with every shopping you get a ticket. With this ticket, you can win champagne on site, or register for further prizes.
On the upper right corner, there is a red field (with the text Magiczny Czek). With a magic pen a text will be made visible on the field. The text can be either nem nyert (not won) or possbily nyert (won).
The funny part comes now: I just looked at the field under an UV bulb and voila, I can see the magic text on a not yet validated ticket. Sadly it didn’t won either.