The Register has a great story on some hackers turning a DreamCast console into a “phone home” box that can be installed inside a firewalled network to allow the installer to access that network from the outside.
The street finds it’s own use for things, indeed.
Here is a great editorial by Ralph Nader. The news media should have promoted him just because he would make the news so much fun to watch.
I got back from H2K2 late Sunday night. I have much to tell, but the two biggest items are secrets so I can’t post them. Annoying.
Here is a non-secret that is related to one of the two secrets: Ryan Lackey is talking about OpenDBS, a electronic cash system he is planning on launching soon at DEF CON X. Since the DEF CON website’s anchor tags arn’t working in konqueror or galeon (I check the html and it seems correct) I’m cutting and pasting the releveant bits.
From the speaker’s page:
Anonymous, secure, open electronic cash
Electronic cash has been the lynchpin of cypherpunk software goals for decades – yet, there is no viable electronic cash system in the marketplace. We will describe the theory, applications, past attempts, politics, failures, and successes in the field. We present a specification and implementation of a new system which is secure, open, extensible, Free, and which will hopefully avoid the technical and strategy mistakes which plagued earlier systems. We will solicit developer involvement in creating applications which use this infrastructure. We hope this infrastructure is a first step toward limiting the power of governments and other oppressors vs. individuals and small groups throughout the world. It is also an example of how to proivide a critical infrastructure application, in an open-source form, in the post-dotcom world, and a generally-applicable demonstration of how security hardware and software can be used in applications to win user trust.
Ryan Lackey, founder and CTO of HavenCo, has been involved with electronic cash and other cypherpunk applications for years. In addition to HavenCo and living full-time on Sealand, he works on several open-source software and hardware projects which are finally ready for public launch. He has a great interest in seeing technology deployed in the service of individuals fighting against the State.
In a few hours I will be heading off to NYC with Jason to check out H2K2. I hope to meat a few people I know from online (esp. Artimage, a new MNet hacker).
If you would like to meat up email me, and I hope to get it via Jason’s laptop and 802.11b.
I’m making a CD for him with all the essentials, python, 802.11b sniffer, mnet source code, cygwin, mingw.
Wired apparently kicks out a good article once or a while. They used to actually be cool in my book, as two bookshelfs of back issues will attest. While I was living in PNG it was my only connection to the internet news besides a per-kb email account.
In the Aug 2002 issue they have an article on broadbands effect on Korea, which is utterly facinated to amature anthropologist like myself.