To ‘think outside the box’, think outside the box

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Want to think outside the box? Try actually thinking outside of a box. In a study to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers had students think up solutions to problems while acting out various metaphors about creative thinking and found that the instructions actually worked.

via To 'think outside the box', think outside the box.

Head Up Displays for you car

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The landscape for car HUDs has changed dramatically over the last year, so here is a short overview for what’s possible.

Microvision: Head Up Displays.

Microvision supplies a Pico projector which uses laser projection to project onto a car. It works during daytime and doesn’t need a film to be added to the glass.

AAXA also delivers a pico projector, which it claims is the worlds’ brightest.

Superimaging has a windscreen soluiton, using an emissive projection display. It doesn’t use pixels, which gives an interesting look to it, no idea how the image is generated though. Some more information here.

Wikipedia also has an interesting article on HUD’s including the different generations.

Virtual Cable is an interesting system that puts loads of information on the windscreen, but nothing on how the hardware works. They overlay the route as a cable op the windsreen, and overlay other information on the windscreen too.

Smart HUD uses Android and the Microvision pico projector to turn your smartphone into a HUD solution. A tracker device is added to the steering wheel, allowing you to safely operate the device.

By far the best software is Atoll Ordenadores ASmartHud series of apps, which are unfortunately iphone only 🙁

Pioneer has a system called Navgate that hangs off your sun visor. Not available outside of Japan yet though

Indigogo has a project called IRIS which is pulled off the Pioneer system

Poorly secured SCADA systems logins posted live on Twitter

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Basically SCADA systems are so poorly secured you can find their logins on Google. In a protest that people are uncovering vulnerabilities but the suppliers aren’t fixing the problem but rather trying to silence the exploiters entirely, this twitter account is posting links to loads of SCADA systems. So if you want to play with some systems, now is your chance 🙂

Someone unnumbered ntisec on Twitter.

UK to give schoolkids programming lessons instead of Excel

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An excellent plan to make the future generations more than just users of software, but makers of software is being launched in the UK, where schoolkids will make 2D animations, program smartphone apps, etc. Sounds like they’ll have a lot more fun than they do now as well as learning something very very useful.

Kids should be making software, not just using it – Gove • The Register.

NL courts rule ISP’s are content filters – great firewall of NL coming up?

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Ziggo and XS4ALL, two ISP’s in NL, have been forced by the courts to dissallow users to get to the pirate bay. Of course, users will still be able to get there using VPNs so it’s not very effective, but more worrying is that the Dutch courts seem to think that not only do they have the right to filter content viewed by Dutch web surfers, but also that the ISP is the right body to act as an internet cop.

Of course, this does set precedence, so expect to see politics and the courts follow their own agenda’s soon and revoke our freedoms for loads of other websites.

Rechtspraak.nl – LJN: BV0549.

Implanted biofuel cell converts bug’s chemistry into electricity: good for literally bugging places

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An insect’s internal chemicals can be converted to electricity, potentially providing power for sensors, recording devices or to control the bug, a group of researchers at Case Western Reserve University report.

via Implanted biofuel cell converts bug’s chemistry into electricity: Scientists take step toward cyborgs.

Cracking WiFi WPS in < 4 hours

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Due to poor implementation a brute force attack can be mounted which only has to guess the first half of the pin. This means there are only 11000 combinations to guess in total and each guess takes around 1.3 seconds. There is no mechanism in routers to disconnect a user after so many failed login attempts.
The PDF shows how it works. There is an unreleased proof of concept tool (Stefan Viehbock is cleaning up the code) but using the paper you should be able to implement it yourself.

viehboeck_wps.pdf (application/pdf Object).

GPRS Interception – how to sniff 2G mobile data

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Karsten Nohl / Luca Melette explained how it works at the Chaos Computer Club Communication Camp 2011.

Camp 2011: GPRS Intercept.

A simpler tutorial can be found here

– Download sources into ~/gprs_sniffer

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/osmocom-bb.git
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/libosmocore.git
git clone git://git.srlabs.de/gprsdecode.git
wget http://srlabs.de/dl/gprs_multi.patch

– Download ARM cross compiler

wget http://gnuarm.com/bu-2.15_gcc-3.4.3-c-c++-java_nl-1.12.0_gi-6.1.tar.bz2
tar xf bu-2.15_gcc-3.4.3-c-c++-java_nl-1.12.0_gi-6.1.tar.bz2

– Compile and install libosmocore

cd ~/gprs_sniffer/libosmocore
autoreconf -i
./configure
make
sudo make install

– Compile gprsdecode

cd ~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode
make

– Prepare OsmocomBB’s burst_ind branch

cd ~/gprs_sniffer/osmocom-bb
git checkout origin/sylvain/burst_ind
git checkout d1cb8ea9b784c7acbafbb2fdcedbdf4655c2f6f5
patch -p1 < ~/gprs_sniffer/gprs_multi.patch - Compile OsmocomBB cd src export PATH=$PATH:~/gprs_sniffer/gnuarm-3.4.3/bin make - Run OsmocomBB firmware # Conect Motorola phone with USB cable cd ~/gprs_sniffer/osmocom-bb/src ./host/osmocon/osmocon -m c123xor -p /dev/ttyUSB0 ./target/firmware/board/compal_e88/layer1.compalram.bin # Switch on Motorola phone - Run OsmocomBB host software (in 2. terminal) cd ~/gprs_sniffer/osmocom-bb/src ./host/layer23/src/misc/cell_log - Adjust to active network # look for active networks in the output: cell_log.c:334 Sync ARFCN 29 (rxlev -52, 289 syncs left) cell_log.c:190 Cell: ARFCN=29 MCC=222 MNC=01 (Italy, TIM) # in this case, network is TIM, and ARFCN is 29 # kill cell_log with ctrl-c, and rerun with correct ARFCN: ./host/layer23/src/misc/layer23 -a 29 # Data channel assignments look like this layer3.c:243 GSM48 IMM ASS (ra=0x72, chan_nr=0x0a, HSN=44, MAIO=0, TS=2, SS=0, TSC=0) l1ctl.c:506 Tx Dedic.Mode Est Req (maio=0, hsn=44, chan_nr=0x0a) # Red lines indicate signal strength # In this case 3 out of 4 slots are used: l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 255) l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 1) l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 255) l1ctl.c:261 BURST IND: @(2064231 = 1556/13/06) ( -50 dBm, SNR 255) # wait for session end or kill with ctrl-c # A file like "bursts_20110821_1648_29_2094723_0a.dat" is produced - Run GPRS decoder # Start Wireshark, capturing on interface "lo" ~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode/gprsdecode bursts_20110721_1648_29_2094723_0a.dat - Optional: Test with sample data wget http://srlabs.de/dl/gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2251_875_494777_0f.dat ~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode/gprsdecode gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2251_875_494777_0f.dat wget http://srlabs.de/dl/gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2252_875_514147_0f.dat ~/gprs_sniffer/gprsdecode/gprsdecode gprs_262_80_0001_0000_20110710_2252_875_514147_0f.dat - Optional: Build Wireshark from source svn co http://anonsvn.wireshark.org/wireshark/trunk wireshark cd wireshark ./autogen.sh ./configure make sudo make install - Optional: Uplink sniffing # the default firmware captures 4 downlink slots, # for uplink you need to compile a different firmware. # open "osmocom-bb/src/target/firmware/layer1/prim_sniff.c" # at line 288, modify #if 1 to 0 # go back to 'Compile and install libosmocore'

Filtering out the pollution you breathe in cities

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Being able to breathe is a big issue and unfortunately the pollution levels in our cities is so high that going out for a run or cycling is more harmful than the health benefits.

So to counter this, there are a few filters available.

Pollution China has a nice article on how to choose the right facemask from Respro.

This is the sport mask, but there are many different products offering different protections and comforts.
Respro: Sports & Leisure – Cycling – Sportsta Mask.

Sanspira also offers nasal filters which are much much smaller but obviously don’t offer much in the way of filtration when breathing through the mouth. here

here

Iran used GPS spoofing to hijack US UAV and force it to land

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“The GPS navigation is the weakest point,” the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran’s “electronic ambush” of the highly classified US drone. “By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.”

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.

Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer – CSMonitor.com.