Criminals steal credit card data just by wardriving

A federal grand jury in Boston has charged eleven people with the theft of more than 41 million credit and debit card numbers from retail stores. What makes this case interesting is that, although the defendants stole the data from retail establishments, they did so without ever having to leave their cars; they stole the numbers while wardriving. While the report doesn’t make it clear whether the targeted networks used weak encryption or were simply unsecured, it’s obvious that the security of your data is still not a top priority for many companies.

GPS logger with wireless trigger

[Matthew] sent us his group’s final project, where they built a nice GPS logging system. Not only can it simply log the GPS coordinates on a predetermined interval, it can also be triggered to make an entry by a wireless device. In this example, they use a camera. This allows them to then upload all the GPS information and pictures to places like Google Earth.

They are using an ATmega644, with an LCD, SD card, and GPS unit. They had to do a little hacking on their camera to add the wireless transmitter, which triggers the logger. You can see not only the cost break down and source code for the project, but also a map with lots of geotagged photos. This is the kind of thing we can almost see as a standard item in the future.

Linksys IP cam hacking

GNUCITIZEN has posted information on linksys wireless IP camera hacking. It turns out that some models send the administrator user name and password to the computer when the setup wizard requests a connection. In theory, someone could send the request and harvest your passwords wirelessly. This seems like a pretty careless oversight. We would think that linksys will probably remedy this before too long.

Update: Part 2 has been posted.

Update: Part 3 has been posted.

Bioloid hacking with Johnny Lee

Though we usually think of Wii projects when we see him, [Johnny Lee] is showing us some Bioloid fun. He’s decided to pick one up to play with, wanting to write his own control programs for it. Unfortunately what he found was that it doesn’t do wireless communication for control. Even after installing a bluetooth module, he found it was only used to trigger different predetermined motions. After some research, he found how to connect the bluetooth module to the main PC link which allows him direct control of the Bioloid via the PC. Unfortunately, the communication speed leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s a good start. We’ll keep our eye on this one.