The £50 Vodafone 3G Suresignal hotspot allows cell phone users with poor mast coverage to set up a mini mast in their own home, that routes 3G traffic through their home WiFi router.
The hardware runs on a standard Arm processor box running Linux. Some researchers have rooted the box and are able to bend it to their will. Allowing it to act like a 3G IMSI Catcher.
You can read all about it here : http://wiki.thc.org/vodafone
Update 15/07/2011 – According to The Register, Vodafone claim this security loophole was fixed a year ago, through an online update to all Suresignal boxes. Now that a mechanism exists for breaking into, and understanding the Suresignal, we think more exploits may yet be uncovered. Possibly.
Has your iPhone started displaying the message “This Accessory Is Not Optimised / Optimized For This iPhone”?
My wife’s iPhone 4 just started doing this over the weekend. Sound would come and go, and the error message would pop up frequently.
I looked around the forums and saw plenty of other people experiencing the same problem. Suggested remedies included removing your screen protector, plugging in and unplugging headphones ten times, etc, etc. Likely causes ranged from pairing up the iPhone with the car’s Bluetooth to buying a new speaker dock. Lots of people were blaming Apple & the latest software update…
In my wife’s case it was none of the above. If you think about this error message logically, then it’s telling you it thinks you have an accessory attached… Where do the accessories plug in? To the charging/USB adapter on the base of the iPhone, of course.
I inspected the connector on the base of the wife’s iPhone 4 with a magnifying glass, in good light, and could clearly see some green grunge across the contacts (likely caused by water contact – I see this all the time inside iPods I refurbish).
The solution is to get a can of ‘IPA Solvent’ (specially for cleaning electronic circuit boards) & a cotton bud. TURN OFF YOUR IPHONE. Pull & flatten both ends of the cotton bud, so they’re ‘Spatula shaped’, and then spray a little IPA solvent on one end. Clean the copper contacts carefully. Then use the dry end of the cotton bud to soak up any excess solvent. Inspect you handwork under a magnifying glass and they should be nice and clean. If the water damage was minimal your iPhone will be fine. (if you dropped it in the bath or toilet it probably won’t fix it).
Seem to be lots of news reports today saying that Pirate Bay (and sites like it) will soon be banned at the ISP level in the UK.
I hope the music & movie industries aren’t expecting a sudden windfall of new customers when this takes place. I can’t see that happening at all.
Here’s what I see happening: Children exchanging USB memory sticks full of copyrighted material outside the school gates. Spivs going around industrial estates selling DVDs full of pirated movies & music. Invitation-only private networks for sharing files. People using secure web-proxies (VPN) to tunnel legitimately to servers in countries not affected by the ban – like Chinese Facebook users do now. All that will happen is that the means of doing all these things will just become common knowledge. Right now, with Pirate Bay, the music/movie cartel can monitor who’s downloading what, they’ll soon lose that ability completely.
If I was running a music company and wanted to reconnect with my customers I’d be focused on giving the customer something they can’t get with a pirate copy – so with every CD sold I’d include a ticket that might win you something really cool, something money alone can’t buy: backstage passes for gigs, chance to watch album recordings, meet the band, etc. Maybe a special access code for an invite-only Facebook friend hookup with the band – something you could brag about to friends. And also a load of little prizes, like the next album for free.
I read a short while ago that album sales are doing well in Japan because they make such a big deal about the artwork & packaging (like we did in the 70/80s with albums in the UK). After all, no one appreciates being given a CD-R with an inky scribble on it for Christmas or their birthday. They can borrow that idea for a TV ad campaign if they like – much better than ‘Copying stuff funds organised crime’, who gives a shit what funds organised crime – because nobody wants to be thought of as a cheapskate bastard.
When I was in my teens the ZX Spectrum home PC was the must have gadget. Kids in my class would use the newly released Amstrad tape-to-tape deck to copy the latest games releases from one tape to another. Because those tapes were analogue, the copy would degrade a little bit each time. You don’t have that problem with digital media, you get a perfect clone every time. Even with that piracy going on, the games companies still made packets of money by innovating constantly. Music tapes were copied in the same way. Many kids would record the Top 40 off the radio on a Sunday evening onto a tape. If I want to listen to ANY of those songs right now I need only go to Youtube.com (some of them even have the original video too). Sure, the quality is better from a CD, but haven’t we all got used to inferior MP3 anyway?
My final point would be that a lot of what the music industry now releases is complete crap. Go find a lot more people like Adele, Rumer, Paolo Nutini and you’ll sell loads of CDs to people like me in their 40s. Finding stuff like this on Youtube actually made me go and buy the CD from Amazon – so please don’t make Youtube your next target!
Looking at Powerwatch’s News Updates this evening, I see that The Council of Europe and Russia are keen to press for new exposure standards for mobile phones.
8.3.
concerning the protection of children:
8.3.1.
develop within different ministries (education, environment and health)
targeted information campaigns aimed at teachers, parents and children to alert
them to the specific risks of early, ill-considered and prolonged use of mobiles and
other devices emitting microwaves;
8.3.2.
ban all mobile phones, DECT phones or WiFi or WLAN systems from
classrooms and schools, as advocated by some regional authorities, medical associations and civil society organisations;
Ubertooth, Funcube Dongle Pro and Sparkfun IOIO for Android.
Three brand new innovative products, all coming out around the same time. All in limited supply, and all completely brilliant!
Ubertooth – Bluetooth sniffing for under £100.
Until now sniffing and injecting packets into Bluetooth communication hasn’t been possible for the man in the street.
The Ubertooth USB dongle will change this for under £100.
The USB adapter just grabs a chunk of 2.4GHz spectrum and your PC processes it. Makes passive detection of Bluetooth devices possible without shelling out £1000 for a USRP. It will be possible to predict Bluetooth hopping pattern. It will also be possible to do man-in-the-middle attacks using two Ubertooths.
UK Buyers can pre-order from RFIDIOt.org. US buyers can pre-order from HakShop
FUNcube Dongle Pro – all frequency audio scanner for under £100.
Another USB dongle featuring three SMD chips to perform a custom task. This dongle is very different from the Ubertooth, but in some ways more amazing.
It can grab up to a 80KHz chunk of radio spectrum from anywhere between 64MHz and 1700MHz (although there is a dead spot between 1100MHz and 1270MHz). It will basically do most things your fancy-pants £1000+ standalone radio scanner will do, for just £100. Basically good for speech & data, but not really video. Works with Windows. Mac OSX & Linux. Appears to PC as a USB audio device & a HID device. Plenty of open source software available to drive it. Interestingly the FUNcube Pro is mentioned on the Osmocom Tetra page.
The only downside is that each batch the designer has made are currently selling out in 2 minutes, when he releases them. Find out more at FUNcube Dongle
Sparkfun IOIO for Android – attach anything to your Android smartphone for under £50.
A really simple way to attach almost any electronic component to your Android Smartphone or Tablet. Thousands of uses will be found. Things will be invented!
This board consists of a USB to Everything adapter & a library of script & device drivers (a bit like an Arduino sketch but in Java). All the computing power & sensors in your Android smartphone available to motors, LEDs, weather stations, robots, PIRs, analog sensors, digital sensors. Just imagine the possibilities. Runs on Android 1.5 & up, so even all those sub-£50 used Android phones will work with it.
Richard Stallman: iPhones and Androids are ‘Big Brother’ tracking devices
I was just looking at the Slashdot website and started reading a piece on Networkworld.com about Richard Stallman’s views on various topics.
Stallman (the open-source software movement is basically his idea) says he won’t own a mobile phone as they’re glorified tracking devices, which can also be used to eavesdrop on you remotely. This of course is all perfectly true, and if you’re of interest to the NSA or UK security services that might bother you (I’m thinking of Julian Assange or anyone who ever stood in a 5 meter perimeter of him). But if the only insight someone might gain into your personal life is that you’re using Sainsburys rather than Tescos for your shop this week, then who really cares?
I only use my Android smartphone for internet access, I don’t make any calls or send any texts. Stallman states that unless you remove the battery ( he actually says all batteries!) you don’t know what your phone is doing. Well I know what my phone is doing… I own an Electrosmog Detector (now sold out but available on eBay and other sites), which turns RF transmissions into audible noise – I’ve also got a couple of spare 9v rechargeable batteries, so I can leave it on whenever I want – and if my phone is transmitting I can hear it.
If you own an Electrosmog Detector & you’re remotely bothered about being monitored, you could just make fart noises every time the phone transmits when you aren’t talking on it! This is much more fun than being paranoid about what it is or maybe isn’t doing. Of course a smart phone with Facebook & Gmail installed will be transmitting regularly, so turn off all those auto-sync services if you want to know when it shouldn’t be transmitting.
If you don’t want to be tracked, then just leave your phone at home half the time, or swop with a big group of friends if you’re a member of any kind of protest group, or just don’t use one. Remember that swoping Sim cards isn’t enough, your mobile also contains a unique IMEI number, and either of those will let you be tracked. You need a new PAYG phone & sim to vanish. (and as soon as you use it to contact an old target you’ll re-appear again).
If you use the internet look into using Tor, or signing up for a secure VPN.
And another thing… I own several laptops & an iMac. I was looking at them recently and must have pre-empted Richard Stallman’s views. I took a big blob of blu-tak and stuck it over each built-in webcam & mic… Well you never know who might have been listening or watching, and they bloody well aren’t now! And one final thing, assume everything you do and look at on the internet is monitored, because it is…
If you didn’t know, every year between Christmas & New Year thousands of computer hackers converge on Berlin to showcase their latest electronic hardware exploits at the Chaos Computer Club conference. I got interested two years ago when some German students demonstrated their £30 Dect phone laptop ‘debugger’ in a talk at 25C3.
The great thing about the yearly CCC conference is, even if you can’t make it there in person, you can watch live streams of the various talks online. This years highlights for me:
I’ve been playing about with motorised webcams this week.
I have a Panasonic BL-C111 IP camera, which looks like any other motorised webcam, but has a web server built in too. This means it doesn’t need a PC to operate, it only needs to be plugged into your router. You can then log in from any other internet connected PC and pan & tilt the camera around. The Panasonic camera gives a great image & can output its video stream in MJPEG or MPEG4 modes – it’s really impressive.
Even better still, you can now get apps for iPhone & Android that allow you to view the camera remotely, move it around & take snapshot photos to the memory card in your phone. The Panasonic BL-C111 is available for around £129 & a wireless model is also available. The free trial app I tried on my Google Android phone can be downloaded from Android Marketplace, just search for “IP Cam Viewer” by Robert Chou. Once downloaded to your phone you can move the camera left, right, up & down just by dragging your thumb over the touch-screen.
If the Panasonic option sounds a bit expensive, you can do things cheaper still. If you already own a motorised Logitech Sphere webcam, you can load up “My Webcam Broadcaster” from Eyespyfx.com for free, and then just pay 5 Euros for the Android or iPhone app to remotely view & move the webcam around. If you don’t have the Logitech Sphere the software will use your laptop’s built-in webcam instead. So for a total outlay of 5 Euros you can see what’s going on in your home when you’re not there, all on your smartphone. Nice!
If you want a really good nights sleep, it might be worth trying unplugging your WiFi router & Dect phone from the power at bedtime. They both transmit constantly, and if they’re near where you sleep they might be the cause of your poor sleep.
Now it’s a great big hassle to remember to unplug each of these from the mains each night, especially if they’re in different rooms in your house. So a neat way to turn them both off remotely is to buy a pair of Remote Control Sockets from somewhere like CPC for £3.95+vat+p&p (order code PL1115610 at cpc.co.uk). You can also find them on eBay for around £10 for a pack of 3.
If you have trouble peeling your kids away from the TV at mealtimes this could be the answer for you too. Food on table, TV mysteriously dies…
Also, don’t leave your mobile turned on overnight, sitting on the bedside cabinet next to your head – modern 3G phones, like the iPhone & Android models, are constantly transferring data with Facebook & Google Mail (assuming you use them) while you sleep. Olders GSM models like the Nokia 3310 transmit for maybe 10 seconds every 20 minutes while you sleep, so the mast can keep track of them.