cool hax

taslayer · #1 (**permalink**) 08-23-07, 15:19

Hacking Your Car

Today's car engines are usually regulated via a computer called the engine control unit, or ECU. That mini-computer often limits performance to meet emissions standards and account for variation in fuel quality. Hijack your ECU with another computer that intercepts its signals, as Aaron Higbee explained in his DefCon presentation, and the fun begins. Not only can Higbee increase an engine's horsepower by about 60%, he says he can also make it shoot five-foot flames out of the tailpipe.

Hacking Your Brain

Any gamer knows that videogames can affect your mental state. But what if your mental state could affect a videogame? Game developers Julian Spillane and a hacker known as Ne0n Ra1n are working on a game that reads a player's stress levels by monitoring heart rate and perspiration levels via an electrode on his or her finger. The game resembles Tetris; but when the player becomes stressed, blocks descend more quickly. The idea, Ne0n Ra1n says, is to teach people with anxiety disorders or other neuroses to control their mental state. "I want to be remembered as the one who killed Prozac," she say

Hacking Virtual Worlds

Today, virtual worlds like "World of Warcraft" can be a source of very real money, thanks to middle markets that allow the auctioning of virtual property and characters. Greg Hoglund, one of the co-authors of Exploiting Online Games, gave a presentation explaining how to maximize that in-game income. By writing "bot" software that automatically controls your "World of Warcraft" character as it slays enemies and completes missions, Hoglund says he can effortlessly develop a character worth around $500 after 20 days.

Hacking Your Toaster

A Google employee once told Dror Shalev, a security researcher with the Israeli Company Checkpoint, that he shouldn't be afraid of his toaster seeing him naked. The comment was meant as a metaphor for data collection. Shalev took it more literally. In his DefCon talk, he presented what he calls a "crazy toaster," a toaster-oven he's fitted with an internal computer that hacks wirelessly into someone's wi-fi network to steal data. The next generation, he says, will have a microphone and camera. The main drawback to Shalev's creation? Actually toasting bread tends to overheat the crazy toaster's processor.

taslayer · #2 (**permalink**) 08-23-07, 15:19

Hacking Lock Systems

A true hacker isn't deterred by any security measures, virtual or physical. In that spirit, Marc Weber Tobias and Matt Fiddler presented methods for picking or breaking any lock in under 10 minutes, using a variety of techniques like drilling, prying, bumping or vibrating. On the higher-tech side, Zac Franken demonstrated the vulnerabilities of magnetic-proximity card readers: By prying off the reader's plastic cover and installing a small device in the lock's wiring, he showed how an intruder could not only access card-locked areas, but also set the reader to deny all other cards.

Hacking Building Security

Johnny Long is the inventor of the "less-is-more" school of hacking. In a presentation titled "No Tech Hacking," he demonstrated how to bypass building security the easy way, with a laminated piece of cardboard. When Long asked companies' employees to pose for pictures, they happily obliged. He then used the photographs to reproduce uniforms and ID badges convincing enough to fool security guards and gain access. "You get the shirt right, you get a little piece of paper, and you're golden," Long says.

Hacking The War In Iraq

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are one of the deadliest elements of the Iraq War. In a presentation called "Hacking Iraq," Michael Schearer described how he spent nine months disarming IEDs, often using radio frequencies to jam the signals that insurgents transmit via walkie-talkie or cellphone to detonate the devices. "Just like any hacking, we develop a tool to block their signals, and they adapt," he says. "We adapt again, and it goes back and forth." Schearer hopes the military will soon make use of a new technology developed by the University of Missouri, designed to detect any electronic device with a circuit.

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