Radio controlled hard drive security

[Samimy] has put together this really neat video tutorial on building a Radio Controlled secure hard drive. How can a hard drive be radio controlled? That’s the first thing we thought too. He has torn apart a remote-controlled car and is using the guts to remotely switch on power to the drive. This means that the drive is only active if you boot the computer after you put the fob in the hidden security system. It looks like it would be fairly effective. We’re curious though, if he is putting the entire drive assembly inside his PC, why rely on batteries for the circuit? Why not pull from the PC power supply? Another neat upgrade might be connecting to an internal USB connection on the motherboard so a reboot isn’t necessary.
Check out the entire video after the break.

The future of cyberattacks

[Dino A. Dai Zovi] gave a talk in the earlier part of 2010 where he shares his thoughts on the future of malicious exploits. You can watch it on Ustream and he’s also posted a set of slides (PDF) that goes along with it. We find the 48 minute video to be quite interested. Instead of going into mundane detail, he covers the broader picture; what has been done in the past, what will happen in the future, and how are we currently ill-equipped to respond to future threats? That last question is covered throughout the video, but seems to come back to the concept that we are stuck in a rut of terminology and past practice that is impeding our ability to innovate security strategies at the same rate that the bad guys are coming up with the next nasty thing to come down the pipeline.

Rotary dial authenticates sudo commands

[W1ndman] won’t win any security awards for this build, but it’s an interesting idea. On many Linux-based systems commands can be run with administrator privileges by prefacing them with the keyword ‘sudo’. Normally you’d be asked for a password but [W1ndman] used the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) to authenticate via his own shell script. That script checks a code from this rotary dial for authentication. An Arduino takes care of listening for each digit that is entered and then sends the code via USB for comparison with a stored file. We’re not sure if that stored code is in a plain file or is otherwise protected, but at the very least this prevents you from using ‘sudo’ willy-nilly.

Building infra red light sources with regular lights

[Oneironaut] sent us another IR hack. This time it is a writeup on the best ways to create IR light sources from regular lights. Since normal flashlight bulbs emit a broad enough spectrum to include visible light and IR light, this basically comes down to filtering. [Oneironaut] explores different light sources and different materials in depth, along with great pictures to show his results. This is a great resource if you’re needing to do some night vision for cheap.

Insane covert IR illumination

[Onironaut] over at lucidscience sent us a link to his latest project, some IR illumination panels. At first, we were mildly enticed by his usual high standard of photography and description. It was just an array of LEDs though. Still, we kept hitting the “next page” button because he goes into such great detail. Then we saw version two. Instead of simply being an array of IR LEDs mounted outside for his security camera, he has mounted 1536 IR LEDs inside an old flat panel monitor. That’s a fake monitor producing 180 watts of IR light, and we think that’s even at half power!  He replaced the screen of the display with one way mirror, so you would have no idea that it isn’t just a normal screen sitting on his desk.  Great job as usual [Onironaut].