Linux Fu: Tracing System Calls
One of the nice things about Linux and similar operating systems is that you can investigate something to any level you wish. If a program has a problem you can decompile it, debug it, trace it, and —...
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A Hacker’s Guide to JTAG
If you’re reading Hackaday, you’ve almost certainly heard of JTAG. There’s an excellent chance you’ve even used it once or twice to reflash an unruly piece of hardware. But how well do you actually...
View ArticleBike Lock Secures Car
[Buttim] loses his car a lot, which might sound a little bit like the plot from an early-00s movie, but he assures us that it’s a common enough thing. In a big city, and after several days of not...
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Reverse Engineering an RGB Keyboard Under Linux
Hardware support under Linux is far better than it ever has been in the past. These days, most things “just work” out of the box, and you probably won’t have to compile any custom kernel modules....
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Reverse Engineering a Saab’s In-Dash Display
For [Leigh Oliver], there’s something undeniably appealing about the green on black instrumentation of the 2003 Saab 9-3 Gen2. Perhaps it’s because the Infotainment Control Module 2 (ICM2) screen...
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How To Keep Unique Equipment Running When Parts Run Out
[JGlass] deals with public-facing technology, which he says includes things like theatre equipment, retail displays, and museum displays. Many of these pieces of technology are literally one-of-a-kind...
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Brain Transplant Makes One Arcade Machine Play Games From Another
We’re used to games consoles in which the same hardware plays a variety of different games, but if we were to peer inside arcade cabinets of an older vintage we’d find custom boards unique to every...
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Reverse Engineering Saves Trashed LED Panels
While out riding his bike, [Hammond Pearce] came across a dumpster overflowing with large LED panels. Despite the fact that the model numbers didn’t reveal anything helpful after some online searching,...
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Poking Around Inside of a Linux Security Camera
This deep dive into the Linux-powered Reolink B800 IP camera started because of a broken promise from its manufacturer. When [George Hilliard] purchased a kit that included six of the cameras and a...
View ArticleLooking for Pi in the 8087 Math Coprocessor Chip
Even with ten fingers to work with, math can be hard. Microprocessors, with the silicon equivalent of just two fingers, can have an even harder time with calculations, often taking multiple machine...
View ArticleLearn the Secrets of Matching Bottle Cap Threads To One Another
Do you want to design something to match existing threads on a bottle, or a cap? It turns out there’s an easier way than reaching tiredly for the calipers and channeling one’s inner reverse-engineer....
View ArticleHigh-End Ham Radio Gives Up Its Firmware Secrets
Amateur radio operators have always been at the top of their game when they’ve been hacking radios. A ham license gives you permission to open up a radio and modify it, or even to build a radio from...
View ArticleReverse Engineering Teaches an Old Scope New Tricks
[PMercier] clearly loves his old Tektronix TDS3014 scope, which did however lack essentially modern connectivity such as an Ethernet port for control and a USB port for a convenient way to capture...
View ArticleDie Photos Reveal Logic from Commodore 128 PLA Chip
The 8721 PLA, or programmable logic array, was one of the chips that had to be invented to make the Commodore 128, the last of the 8-bit computers that formed the leading edge of the early PC...
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Unbricking a $2,000 Exercise Bike with a Raspberry Pi Zero and Bluetooth Hacks
Really, how did we get the point in this world where an exercise bike can be bricked? Such was the pickle that [ptx2] was in when their $2,000 bike by Flywheel Home Sports was left without the...
View ArticleExotic Device Gets Linux Support via Wireshark And Rust
What can you do if you have a nice piece of hardware that kinda works out of the box, but doesn’t have support for your operating system to get the full functionality out of it? [Harry Gill] found...
View ArticleBreaking Smartphone NFC Firmware: the Gory Details
Near-field Communication (NFC) has been around a while and is used for example in access control, small data exchange, and of course in mobile payment systems. With such sensitive application areas,...
View ArticleHacking D-Link Firmware
When [0xRickSanchez] found some D-Link firmware he couldn’t unpack, he was curious to find out why. The firmware had a new encryption method which was doing its job of preventing tampering and static...
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A Deep Dive into the Sterzo Steering Plate
Pedaling in place isn’t the most exciting pastime, so it’s no surprise that modern technology is being used to make the in-home biking experience a bit more interactive. With a stand on the rear wheel...
View ArticleWhat’s Inside An FPGA? Ken Shirriff Has (Again) The Answer
FPGAs are somewhat the IPv6 of integrated circuits — they’ve been around longer than you might think, they let you do awesome things that people are intrigued by initially, but they’ve never really...
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