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My thoughts about “Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets” story

Filed Under: security by Geordy
May.17, 2010

CBS news recently reported that copy machines manufactured since 2002 have hard drives.  As usual, CBS went out of their way to sensationalize the story.  If you have not seen the video, here is the link to the original story:

Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets

If you just take that story at face value and don’t question it at all, you would be terrified into thinking that your own insurance company, the social security administration and maybe the police department all have allowed copy machines containing piles of your personal data to be returned to be resold at the end of a lease period.  This is not entirely true and has been blown out of proportion by the media hype machine as usual.

Many companies have policies that allow them to retain(for destruction) the hard drives in their copiers at the end of a lease period.  Others will wipe the drives before returning them to the leasing companies.  I would urge any company who does not have such a policy in place to enact one immediately.

Next, the video leads viewers to believe that there is an option to add security to these copy machines but it costs $500 extra and nobody does it.  That option the video is referring to is a scrambler board specifically for Toshiba copiers; others may have such an option too.  I suppose that is a nice option but most(all?) copiers have settings available (in minimal configurations even) to ensure that documents aren’t stored on the hard drive after they are printed off or at least are deleted after a certain amount of time passes.  Yes, forensics can recover deleted files but this is one more hurdle for an identity thief to jump over and I would wager that most of them don’t have the skills for such a task.

Lastly, the video alleges that these 4 copy machines were picked “randomly” by page count, age, etc.  BULL!!  I don’t buy that for a minute.  I would love to have been there in person to watch them cherry pick the four machines they dragged back to their office.  “Look, insurance company asset tag, we’ll take it!”

All in all this story seems like a bunch of FUD.  These used copy machine warehouses being a candy store for identity thieves makes a nice news story but don’t forget that A) It takes a bit of effort and money to drag home a bunch of copiers at random to mine for data.  B) Much of the world’s population of identity thieves are overseas and mining data on copiers isn’t really practical for them anyways. C) Identity thieves usually go for the lower hanging fruit.  It’s way cheaper and easier to dumpster dive or steal your mail to gain the information they need.

That being said, you can’t count on anyone else to sanitize your used devices.  That includes old cell phones, ipods, laptops or anything else that might have personal data on them.  Always check those items before they leave your possession.

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Arithmetic and logic on the TinyELF emulator part 2

Filed Under: programming by Geordy
May.16, 2010

Moving on with chapter 5 of “A Short Course In Programming“, I’m finding some more nifty opcodes to dissect.  These versions are sort of the evil twins of the first three that I went over in part 1.  Key in program 5.1 if you haven’t already.

ORI – The bytecode for ORI is F9.  Let’s bring back the pair we’ve been using all along.  F9, 33, 55:

33 = 0011 0011

55 = 0101 0101

F7 = 1111 0111

Woah!  What’s the deal?  This isn’t what we are used to at all.  Let’s flip this thing backwards and see what happens:

55 = 0101 0101

33 = 0011 0011

D5 = 1101 0101

Hmmm, that didn’t help.  Perhaps a different approach:

FF = 1111 1111

FF = 1111 1111

FF = 1111 1111

Well I suppose that’s a little better.  The brute force learning method isn’t working for this one.  Time to get to the bottom of this…  Ok.  Slowing the computer to single step through gives a bit of a clue to what is really happening here.  The 33 is not being read at all.  It’s entirely being ignored.  When the program runs, you could put anything in for the second value and it won’t change the outcome because C4 is hard coded into the program in location 002A which is the byte immediately following 0029 where our opcode lives.  When we write it out like this, it makes a ton more sense:

33 = 0011 0011

55 = 0101 0101

C4 = 1100 0100

F7 = 1111 0111

AHA!  We are back to a plain old OR.  This time however, instead of taking the input value from the 0061 location, the F9 opcode ignores the SEX 6 instruction and addresses the immediate byte instead.  I’m sure this will come in handy in the future, I just don’t know how yet.

ANI – Ho hum, more of the same funny business here.  Try FA, 33, 55:

33 = 0011 0011

55 = 0101 0101

C4 = 1100 0100

00 = 0000 0000

ANI is AND in disguise but also ignoring the E6 opcode and simply comparing the datum residing in the next byte of memory.

XRI – Do I even need to explain this one?

33 = 0011 0011

55 = 0101 0101

C4 = 1100 0100

F7 = 1111 0111

XRI is XOR in disguise but once again ignoring the second datum, 55.  As a refresher, XOR changes all bits that are different to a 1 and all bits that are the same to a 0.

ADD – You probably think ADD is going to be super easy with no gotchas.  You are mostly correct.  There is only one little thing…  To demonstrate this, I’ll change the numbers up a bit.  The bytecode is F4 BTW:

FF = 1111 1111

01 = 0000 0001

00 = 0000 0000

DOH!  We just blew it.  If you have your “1802 State” window in TinyELF open however, you’ll see that the DF bit is now set high.  This means that FF + 01 actually equals 0100.  Let’s take one step back and check out something more palatable:

33 = 0011 0011

55 = 0101 0101

88 = 1000 1000

If you thought we were through chapter 5, think again.  This is only about half way there.  Oddly, we are also half way through the entire book at this point.  It’s been a long journey, don’t quit now.

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Thanks to half of the US for checking out notANON.com

Filed Under: web by Geordy
May.15, 2010

It’s been a fun first month of operating my tech blog.  I’ve used this space for motivating me to delve into some more technical projects with my free time and learn some cool stuff.  In my first month, I’ve received hits from exactly half of the states in the US.  I want to thank the folks who have dropped in and I’d like to encourage people to leave some more comments.  Keep checking back for new and exciting projects right here at notANON.com.

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Arithmetic and logic on the TinyELF emulator part 1

Filed Under: programming by Geordy
May.14, 2010

I got a bit stuck at the end of chapter 4 of Tom Pittman’s book “A Short Course in Programming“.  Some of the concepts of registers become a bit hard to track but I think I have those fairly well figured out.  Now onto a new tougher section; section 5.  One nice thing about this section is the fact there is only one program to enter.  Unfortunately it’s a bit of a monster compared to the previous programs.  It spans almost 50 bytes!  This program is one of the coolest so far though.  It allows you to put in any opcode and then two bytes of data and see what the outcome is.  The inner workings of the program (5.1) aren’t important here.  The important thing to grasp is what all of these logic and arithmetic opcodes are actually doing.  I will attempt to explain what I think the computer is doing as I figure that out myself.

One interesting note is that the 1802 is computing in binary but you are going to enter everything in hex and get all of your results back in hex.  Follow this link if you need help converting between binary, decimal and hex.

OR – The first opcode that Tom refers to is OR.  OR falls into the logic category.  When I plug into the program F1, 33, 55, I get a value back of 77.  Same goes for F1, 55, 33.  So what is the computer actually doing?  55+33 would be 88 so it’s not adding the numbers together, or is it?

It sort of is.  If you break the numbers back out to binary, this is a little easier to follow:

55 = 0101 0101

33 = 0011 0011

77 = 0111 0111

If you look at the table above, you’ll see that OR is saying that if either of the bits is set to 1, then set to a 1.  If both bits are set to 1, it’s still one.  If both bits are 0, then it’s still 0.  It’s comparing the numbers moreso than adding them together.

If you enter F1, 33, 33, you’ll get 33 because the bits are identical in both bytes so nothing will change.

Let’s test the theory on bigger numbers:

A9 = 1010 1001

DE = 1101 1110

Look at the table.  You should easily see the answer if you understand this concept.  The A byte corresponds with the D byte.  There is a 1 for every spot so ORing them together nets a result of F or 1111.  Now looking at the 9 byte and the E byte, there is also a 1 for every bit there so the result is F as well.

AND – The opcode for AND is F2.  If OR made sense to you, AND should be a piece of cake.  Let’s try our example of F2, 33, 55.  The result is a very perplexing 11.  Putting in F2, 55, 33 will net the same result.  Why?  Let’s look at the binary for the answer:

33 = 0011 0011

55 = 0101 0101

11 = 0001 0001

AHA!  The binary bits BOTH have to be set high in the same locations.  5 and 3 only share one common bit that is set high.  That is the 1 bit.  For the bonus round, how do you get a result returned of FF?  It’s pretty easy when you think about it.  FF has ALL bits set high.  AND only returns a high bit if all corresponding bits are set high.  So F2, FF, FF = FF.  There is only one right answer for that question unlike the OR operations.

XOR – This only sounds scary and confusing because XOR (zor or x-or) is not a familiar word in the English language.  The concept is really fairly simple when you look at it in binary.  Once again, let’s pull up our trusty pair 33 & 55.  F3, 33, 55:

33 = 0011 0011

55 = 0101 0101

66 = 0110 0110

HUH?!?  Where did this 66 come from you say?  Look closer.  If one OR the other bit was set to 1, a 1 is returned.  If both bits were set to 1, you get a 0 back.  If both bits were set to 0, you get a 0 back.  Make sense?  Let’s test the theory on some more interesting numbers:

E9 =1110 1001

3A = 0011 1010

D3 = 1101 0011

FF = 1111 1111

00 = 0000 0000

FF = 1111 1111

This concludes part 1 of my post.  In my next post, I will dissect the ORI, ANI & XRI operators.  Should be interesting…

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Worms on the iPod/iPhone

Filed Under: games by Geordy
May.13, 2010

Worms is one of the most original console games around.  If you haven’t played it before, skip the 3D versions and try out any of the large number of other 2D Worms ports from the Commodore 64 version all the way to the Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo DS and beyond.

Anyhow, I was surfing in the app store not finding Worms.  Then I looked around a bit on the web wondering if Worms would be ported soon.  I found a few shreds of hope.  Unfortunately one of the “shreds” of hope is over 2 years old already.  It’s a post here stating iPhone gaming – Worms on the way.  I’m not sure if that video up above is a fake or not but it sure looks like fun.  I’d love to see any updates on this subject.  Post some comments if you know anything or if you would also like to see Worms on the iPod/iPhone/iPad/iDevice.

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How to install DD-WRT on the WRT54G-TM

Filed Under: gadgets, networking by Geordy
May.12, 2010

It seems that all of the Linksys WRT54G’s that I’ve come across for a good price lately are the WRT54G-TM variant.  The TM stands for T-Mobile.  In all honesty I’m not sure how the T-Mobile hot spot functionality works.  I don’t really care either.  What I know is that this router is actually an excellent candidate for a DD-WRT installation.  In fact, I’d argue that it’s even better than the WRT54GL because this one has 32MB of ram opposed to the 16MB on the GL version.  The only small downside on the WRT54G-TM is that you’ll have to jump through a couple more obstacles to make it run DD-WRT.  Don’t let this put you off at all!  There are excellent instructions out there and I’m going to give you a short overview as well.  First off, here are the official instructions for putting DD-WRT on the WRT54G-TM.

If you plan to load this firmware on your WRT54G-TM, I highly recommend using Internet Explorer on Windows.  Everything seems to go the smoothest using this configuration.  When I’ve tried Firefox on my Mac I’ve had trouble and the same goes for Safari.  Just save some pain and use IE if you have access to it.  Now for the fun stuff:

  1. Download the latest version of DD-WRT for the WRT54G-TM.  Run a quick search on this page to find it.  http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database.  While you are there, grab the tftp program and the CFE updater binary.
  2. Set your Windows machine to the static ip 192.168.0.2.  While you are in there, click advanced and add a second ip 192.168.1.2.
  3. Pick a port 1-4 and plug it into your computer’s ethernet port.
  4. Do a hard reset on your WRT54G-TM to put it back to factory settings by unplugging the router, holding the reset switch on the back of the router, plugging it in and keeping holding the switch for 30 seconds.
  5. Log into your router at 192.168.0.1.  No username, password is admin.
  6. Click administration, then update firmware.  Update the firmware with the CFE binary file.  That should go pretty quick and say something like “Upgrade succeeded”.
  7. Wait….  While you are waiting, bring up a command prompt and ping -t 192.168.1.1.  When you get a response to your pings, you can quit waiting and move to the next step.
  8. Fire up the TFTP client and type in 192.168.1.1 for the server IP and for the file put in the location of the ddwrt.v????  firmware file.  Hit upgrade and wait.
  9. Now go to 192.168.1.1 in your web browser.  You should see a screen prompting a user password change.  Now is a great time to set your root password.

That’s it!  It sounds a lot harder than it actually is.  Post some comments on your own experiences with the WRT54G-TM.

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Zipit serial board PCB picture

Filed Under: electronics, zipit by Geordy
May.12, 2010

I had James etch the PCB for me since he’s set up a bit better for it thanks to a previously broken laminator I found somewhere.  To produce the board he used a laser printer to print on magazine paper, then he puts the printed surface facing a clean PCB and runs it back and forth through the laminator a couple of times.  Then he etches it.  He has a custom acrylic tank he made that has a fish tank bubbler and heater in it.  As you can see, the result is outstanding!  I’m waiting for my new Hakko 936 before I attempt to solder it up however.

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Infosec Daily Security podcast review

Filed Under: podcasts, reviews by Geordy
May.11, 2010

Late 2009 I started becoming interested in security podcasts.  In general, security podcasters put out a lot of excellent information in an entertaining format.  I’ve come to find that many of them follow the same format to the point of being a bit cliche.  Things like crazy sound boards, beer de jour, etc.  ISD has a couple of these formula elements but they also have their own unique angles that give them value and make them entertaining.

ISD is the first podcast I ever listened to so I didn’t really have anything to judge it against.  I’ve listened to a lot more podcasts since then however and I still find that ISD stands out as one of the better ones.  I find Matthew and Rick very entertaining since the dynamic they share reminds me of the way myself and a former co-worker used to banter about and finally solve our heated discussions with Google.  I also applaud Rick and Matthew’s dedication.  These guys podcast EVERY WEEKDAY.  Wow!!  Most podcasters would(and do) run out of steam but these guys have put out more content already than 95% of the other podcasters out there ever will.

One of the best things about ISD is Thursdays where they bring on Adrian Crenshaw, the Irongeek for a weekly technical segment.  Adrian must clone himself or something because I hear him calling in and talking on all the other podcasts, I see that he goes to a zillion cons, holds a day job and tweaks with hardware hacks as a hobby.  Incredible.  He’s very interesting to listen to and is always working on a fascinating project.

Overall, the ISD guys are obviously dedicated to providing good content.  They haven’t even been around for a year yet (as of 5/7/10) but they have brought on plenty of interesting guests to interview and spewed off a lot of well-thought out content so far.  I think these guys are definitely worth a listen even if you aren’t directly in the computer security field yourself.

One last thing to keep in mind is that the ISD guys are VERY slanted towards security and local events in the southeast since they are based in Georgia.  They proudly pimp all of their hometown security conferences, events and training.  If you don’t live in the southeast, you’ll probably have to find information about local events from another source.  Nothing wrong with that, it’s just an observation.

Keep up the great work guys!

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My favorite iPod apps

Filed Under: games, mac, reviews by Geordy
May.11, 2010

I’ve owned an iPod touch for about four months now.  Already it is an indispensable piece of equipment that I use many, many times every day.  For years I resisted the lure of an iPod because I thought of it as a glorified mp3 player.  100% not true.  In fact I don’t have any mp3’s on mine at all.  Just some podcasts and a few awesome apps.  I have not bothered to jailbreak my device because I don’t think it is necessary.  I plan to get an Android phone this summer when the Supersonic comes out and I plan to root that for my extra-functional fix.  Here are a few of the apps that I use all the time and couldn’t live without now:

Logmein Ignition – The ultimate app for the iPhone/iPod.  This allows you to remotely log in to your desktop or laptop computer and control anything on the screen possible.  If you have multiple monitors, shake it to switch screens.  Your mouse pointer stays in the middle of the screen and you move your desktop behind it.  Use gestures to zoom in, zoom out, scroll and more.  Best part is that it caches your login and password so you can jump right into your desktop quickly.  Control your Mac or Windows machine with this app.  It’s $30 but worth every penny and it works with the free version of logmein.

WordPress – This app allows you to blog right from your iPhone or iPod.  It ties straight into your admin panel and lets you skip the login if you like.  Great for when an idea strikes you and you are nowhere near your computer.  You have to toggle a setting in the admin panel to set it up but that’s easy.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars –  This game is a surprisingly good milepost in the series.  For a long time I judged it by the screen shots but it actually plays much better than you would think.  It has a good story and is well tweaked for the mobile platform.  Autosaves occur after every mission and you can put your iDevice to sleep in the middle of anything and when you come back, things will be as you left them.  It’s not nearly as involved as a ps2 or ps3 version but it’s a good little time killer when you have a few minutes.

Katamari Damacy – This game seems like a natural for this platform.  If you haven’t played it before, I strongly urge you to try it out.  If you have a ps2, do yourself a favor and grab the very first version of Katamari Damacy.  This game is simple in concept.  You roll a ball around an area and it gets larger as you roll over things.  The cubist art style makes the game more interesting and amusing.  I do wish you could switch between tilt controls and on-screen but other than that, this is one of my favorite console games so it’s nice to have it on the go.

O’Reilly books – The same O’Reilly books that are down at the bookstore for $20-$60/ea are available from the app store for $3-$5/ea.  I think that’s fair.  I’ve bought 3 of them so far and they are great.  For something like a programming language reference book these are especially nice since they are searchable and bookmarkable.  My only complaint is that in some of the books, the comments in the code samples get cut off for some reason.  Still, for $5 I’m not complaining at all.  It’s also nice to be able to fit a respectable O’Reilly library right in your pocket and always have it at your fingertips.

Speed Test – I use this app all the time.  It allows you to see how good (or bad) your internet connection is.  It also logs it along with a GPS coordinate.

FlowChat – IRC in my pocket.  If you thought IRC was dead and that twitter has taken it’s place, think again.  It’s live and kicking.  Most of the IRC networks I used to use in the 90’s are still there but irrelevant now in my opinion.  The server that seems to have the topics most interesting to me is Freenode.  If you jump on there, you’ll probably find me in #zipit.  I have not tried the competitor to Flowchat, Colloquy but I use Colloquy on my MacBook Pro and it works well on there so that might also be worth a look.

This list is by no means exhaustive but those are my top choices.  Honorable mentions go out to Twitteriffic, Kindle, Amazon, RingCentral, pTerm & Skype.  Please post in the comments if you have any cool apps that you can’t live without.

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TinyELF direct keypad output

Filed Under: programming by Geordy
May.10, 2010

When I first booted the TinyELF before I had ANY clue how to use it, I did what most people would do.  I started punching hex keys in and staring dumbly at the 2 digit display wondering why it didn’t do anything.  Finally, today, I know why.  It’s because it didn’t have this program I wrote up:

0001   6400   OUT4    Clear display

0003   90       GHI        Zero the accumulator

0004   B6       PHI       Set R6 hi to 00

0005   F820   LDI       set accumulator to 20

0007   A6       PLO       Set R6 lo to 20

0008   E6       SEX 6   Point input and output at location 0020

0009   6C      INP C     Read keypad and store at 0020

000A   64      OUT 4    Read 0020 print to display

000B   3002  BR          Loop back

Simple program but it proves a point.  All these years you have expected to push a key, button, knob, whatever and get some sort of feedback, right?  Well that only happens because someone along the way made it so.  In fact Apple has teams of engineers that specialize in nothing but that sort of thing.

Take another look at the computer you are using right now and consider how many lines of code are running behind the scenes that represent seemingly tiny and minute details of how your system behaves.  It’s mind boggling and testament to team work at it’s finest.

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