Root Compromise

As the title says, I think I saw the Google Street View car out the other morning. I was just driving to work and noticed it in front of me at as I pulled up to the stoplight, and the California plates made me wonder. Of course being the geek that I am I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture, two actually but the second one is tiny for some reason. Anyway, I thought it was kind of cool to see it in person and I’m looking forward to seeing, when that road is uploaded, if my car is on the road.

We had a Dc801/2600 meeting on Friday and it turned out pretty well. Kampf was talking on IRC a few weeks ago about stopping by the meeting location last month and being the only one there, which is sad. So influx, kampf, and I decided we would show up in March and I said I would organize the meeting if people would come. When I started out I thought if we could get 10 people this month that would be nice, well we got 21. Not bad at all.

I brought the locks, picks, and pikstation mentioned below and invited some folks from the lockpicking101.com forums so that gave us something to do. MBI from LP101 showed up with a bunch of locks an picks as well so between the two of us we were able to drop sufficient knowledge to get people started picking. If I’m not mistaken everyone that attempted to pick a lock was successful. MBI also brought a few inexpensive pick sets with him that he sold to people at cost so they could get practicing. I hope a few others catch the lockpicking bug as much as I did. It was a great sight seeing 20+ people all picking locks, I hope to replicate it again next month.

My new lock picking gear came today. I was glad that it did because there’s going to be a DC801/2600 Meeting on Friday and I wanted to do a lock picking primer at the meeting. I’m a fan of all types of security, and the bypassing thereof, so naturally locks fall into that category, and while I dabbled here and there over the years I’ve been dedicating significantly more time and effort into honing my skills. And as the newest member of TOOOL I figure it’s time to share that knowledge.

So I picked up a PikStation+Plus with the Deluxe TriPik Holding Fixture and a bunch of 5-pin practice locks for the fixture. Five practice locks that have a Kwikset keyway, three with the Schlage keyway, and one cutaway practice lock with a Schlage keyway to help illustrate what’s going on in the lock as you’re picking, or just inserting a key.

I was really stoked when my picks I ordered came as well. I ordered a few new picks from Peterson International so I’d have enough for everyone to use if people wanted to try their hand at picking a lock, plus I got some new picks and that’s never a bad thing. I picked up 2 Hooks, 2 Triple Rakes, 2 Peterson Reach, a Peterson Gem, and a Half Diamond pick all with rubber handles from their Carbon Spring Steel individual picks section. The picks end up costing $4.25 a piece because they’re good quality and the rubber handles make them cost a bit more but I think it’s worth it. I’ve used the textured handled picks and they aren’t bad but rubber is just a lot nicer grip. While I haven’t use the plastic handle picks I’m still going to talk out of my ass, or at least assume, and say the rubber handles are nicer. I’ve held plastic before, it didn’t grip well.

I’ve e-mailed myself the Utah laws on possession of burglary tools just in case; so this Friday I’m going to head over to the meeting with a backpack full of Cylinders, Padlocks, and Picks, and hopefully teach someone something. If I can plant the picking bug on just one more person, than that’s good enough for me.

I decided to unlock my phone in case I wanted to pick up a prepaid SIM or something when I’m in Europe in March. It ended up being a pretty painless process so I was pleased with that. I knew that your cellular provider was supposed to let you do it due to that FCC ruling awhile back, I just thought they’d make you jump through more hoops to do it.

I just called up T-Mobile and they transferred me over to their Blackberry Services department, the girl just wanted to know why I wanted to unlock my phone. I told her I was heading overseas and she said “Okay, I just need to verify some information and we’ll get your unlock code and instructions over to you within 24 hours.” That’s it? Cool.

Here’s what I got 24 hours later…

T-Mobile Sim Unlock Request
Sim Unlock Reference: XXXXXXX
IMEI: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Unlock Code: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile. Below you will see the Instructions for unlocking your Blackberry 8100 Pearl device.

1. Press the Menu key.
2. Scroll to Options and press the trackball.
3. Scroll to Advanced Options and press the trackball.
4. Scroll to SIM Card and press the trackball.
5. Type MEPPD
Note: When typing in MEPPD the letters will not appear on the screen. This step opens up the personalization on the device.
6. Press the Alt key and type MEPP2
Note: When typing in MEPP2 the letters/number will not appear on the screen. This Step opens up the Enter Network MEP code box.
7. Enter unlock code.
8. Press the Enter Key.

Thank You,

Sim Unlock Department
T-Mobile USA, Inc.

I figured I’d post the e-mail here in case anyone had never seen it. One thing they mess up on is telling you to use the Alt key and then type MEPP2, it should be MEPP then use the Alt key to enter the number 2. But meh, use your noodle and you figure that out in about five seconds.

My web host broke and subsequently lost a good half of my Gallery albums. I got most of it fixed and will be restoring over the next 24 hours or so.

Sorry about that. I’m not thrilled either.

I hesitate calling what is essentially upgrading my TiVo “hacking”. The first guy that did it, he hacked his TiVo, I just borrowed his skills; either way I now have room for a lot more shows on it.

I have a TiVo Series 2 Dual Tuner box. I haven’t found the need to drop the coin on an HD TiVo box yet, but someday I’m sure I’ll cave and get one. Anyway, basically all you need to do is grab an ISO of the backup software and use it to boot to linux. You copy over your stuff from your old drive to the new drive and in about an hour or two you’re up and running. Easy as pie.

I picked up a 500GB hard drive from Best Buy, because that’s the largest size they had with an IDE connection, and a #10 and #15 Torx tip screwdriver at Wal-mart. Got home and looked up some instructions on weaKnees and opened up the TiVo. You can buy upgrade kits from them that are about 100% markup from the cost of the drive, but if you do it yourself you can spend the rest of that money on penny candy. Yay Candy! They’re pretty cool though and have all the instructions for DIY and extensive forums if you get stuck. So I went the cheap and capable route and did it myself. I ran into a few snags, one being that the initial ISO I downloaded couldn’t find my CD-Rom drive, but I grabbed the ISO with SATA support and that worked like a charm. It has nothing to do with anything being SATA, it just found my drive. *shrug*

The msftools software included on the CD took about an hour to backup and restore my current 80GB drive to the new 500GB drive and I was in business. It was a hell of a lot easier than I imagined and I could do it again quickly if the need arose. So now I’ve gone from 78 possible hours of TV to up to 560 hours. So instead of saving 5 episodes at a time of “No Reservations” and “Ninja Warrior“, I’m saving 25. Why? I have no idea, I just wanted to do it. I’m sure part of it had to do with my wife and kid’s shows clogging up “my” TiVo; but a lot of it I think is just the geek in me wanting to do it.

What can I say, I’m no good at this. The odd thing is that I come to my own site from time to time like I expect something new to be here.

I’ve been really busy working on my latest book project which is now available for purchase. It’s another book dealing with Juniper Networks products, this time the Secure Access device, or SSL VPN. So I ended up writing about work when I wasn’t at work. Oh well.

After I finished that up I went on an Otaku binge and started watching Anime every night for hours, for several weeks. DeathNote, Code Geass, Naruto, Ghost in the Shell, etc. It’s been nice to be able to spend some time just geeking out for fun. And in there I went back to Tokyo again, the pics are up.

At some point I have to get the pictures from D.C., Amsterdam, Vegas, and Rome up. Maybe I can do some of that this week.

Look at that, something to read when I visit my own site again.

Kampf, dedhed, A, veruus, and I are headed out to Vegas this evening for the Black Hat USA show, followed by Defcon of course. It’s going to be hotter than hell when we arrive, but it dips down into the high 90’s next week, which is arguably not that bad.

I’m going to be twittering the hell out of these conferences so I can attempt to remember them later. I even convinced kampf to set up an account and document his experiences. Veruus already has one, now we just need dedhed and A on board and it’ll be a “con”acopia of Black Hat and Defcon updates for those left behind.

I’ll be taking half a day at work today so I can finish packing and get to the airport with enough time for the TSA body cavity search that will no doubt ensue. Let the games begin.

So I succumbed to the siren song that is Twitter. A few months ago I looked at the site and thought “LAAAME!” and moved on, not thinking anything more of it. Then a few weeks ago I took another look and started to read up on the possible functionality of Twitter, and it grew on me.

For those unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s basically like a cross between dodgeball, a blog, and a really slow chat room or message board. Essentially you answer the question “What are you doing?”, by text message, IM, or web, using 140 characters, as often as you like throughout the day and it gets posted to your twitter page. It can also be sent as a text message to anyone that is following your twitters, or tweets. You can make them private so only your friends can see, or public for the whole world. And in a world where we all think everyone wants to know what we’re doing all the time, it’s amazing it took this long for something like this to show up.

It’s kind of nice if you have all of your friends following your tweets and you say “Going to see (insert movie here) tonight with (insert friend here) at 9:00pm.” Maybe another friend is free and gives you a call and says “Hey I haven’t seen that movie yet, Jack and I will meet you there.” Or when you’re going out to eat, meeting up for drinks, or going to a game. For me it’s more of a way for my family and friends that aren’t local to keep tabs on what I’m up to. It gives people a way to connect that might otherwise have been lost.

I ended up snagging TwitterBerry for my Pearl, which is how I send the majority of my tweets. I’ll be using it at Black Hat and Defcon over the next two weeks, so it’ll be a fun way of keeping track of what I was up to, when maybe a blog post, which I’m really bad at anyway, might not be needed for.

Anyway, the point is, check out Twitter, sign up, or watch for my updates. I added a place on the sidebar to the left that will have my 5 latest tweets, or you can just go to http://twitter.com/Grifter801 to see them all.

I didn’t even make it through all of Black Hat Federal before I quit posting daily. It’s harder than it seems. I get done for the day and just want to sleep rather than type up a post about what I just did. I..am a…failure.

Since that last post I obviously returned from Washington D.C. and have since been to Amsterdam for the Black Hat Europe show and went to Rome for a few days as well. I have pictures from those trips that I’ll have to get uploaded soon.

Also, some of you may have noticed Gallery was broken for a little bit. Well, my host changed servers and decided to break my site without telling me. Yay! But all seems well now, so I’ll keep watching to see if it dies again.

I’ll be posting more regularly again. Life was busy for a little while.