Kevin Hjelden and his friend Joe built this autonomous shooter for this year’s Defconbots competition. They described the build before they started: The electronics for this project are going to be relatively simple as well. To control the three servos (pan + tilt + firing), we are going to use the Pololu 8-channel servo controller. […]
MAKE pal Jason Striegel has a great interview and HOW TO from DEFCON on picking a dead-bolt…Here’s a quick and dirty deadbolt lock picking howto that’ll give you and your friends some cheap entertainment on a slow weekend afternoon. Link.
Everyone at DEFCON went out of their way to get/learn/explore the Cisco flaw because of the way it was (poorly) handled…Angered and inspired by Cisco’s attempts to suppress news of the flaw earlier in the week, several computer security experts at the Defcon computer-security conference worked past midnight Saturday to discover and map out the vulnerability. I saw the PDF(s) actually being handed out to random people all over Vegas too. Link.
The vendor room at DEFCON is always a real treat. From metric tons of old computers to how-to books on everything you should and should ever even consider. I also ran in to the folks from the BBS Documentary; the audio interview will be posted up shortly. Here are some photos of neat old computers and parts that were for sale…Link.
RobotWarez is a contest that takes place at each DEFCON. Since the target audience is hackers, elegant approaches are rewarded, and simple brute force is not encouraged. When I was there, the robots were firing something with compressed air and doing a good job of knocking some cans over. Photos here and here.
…the world record holders for the longest distance for an unamplified Wi-Fi link (55.1 miles at 30mw) blasted through their own year old record today at the Defcon Wi-Fi Shootout. Team PAD shot their signal a distance of 125 miles from outside Las Vegas, Nevada to a location near St. George, Utah, winning them a new record in the “unamplified” category at the shootout. Link.
“Security researcher Michael Lynn has settled a dispute with Cisco over his presentation on hacking the company’s routers, which was given at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week. The two parties and Black Hat organisers have agreed not to further discuss the presentation, which contained techniques Lynn said could bring the Internet to its knees.” [via] [BoingBoing round up] Link.
