I’m not a big fan of bluetooth and I’ve only used it like five times on my old Pocket PC, but I have seen some cool things come from it, mostly exploits.
I found this awesome how-to that lets you snoop onto those bluetooth enabled phone earset thingys. You can even do it when the person isn’t using it for a call to hear what it going on around them. Talk about some high tech eavesdropping.
Needless to say, once I get some bluetooth gear, I will definately try this out.
Check out the video here on WonderHowTo.com
I was listening to Newsreal yesterday and heard about the daily hack and I decided I would post mine which I’m sorta proud of.
So I’m sitting at home just after the holidays and I’m waiting for some batteries to charge so I can go play with a couple of new R/C cars that I picked up at Toys-R-Us.
My idea was to strap an old digital video camera on top of one of them. It started off with me actually scotch taping the old digital camera to the top of the R/C car and setting it to record while I drove it around, which was kinda neat, but then I started thinking of ways that I could control it remotely. I ended up buying a few more parts and putting together something really cool that can be used for exploring all sorts of places you’re not supposed to be.
In the pics you can see some of the variations of the remote cam car that I put together.
Parts included a VR headset from Sharper Image that sports two tiny LCD screens at a resolution of 640×480, I connected it to the wireless 2.4gHz camera receiver and powered the receiver via a portable Black and Decker battery pack about the size of the receiver itself.
I stripped a couple of the other R/C cars for parts like radio receiver and servo motors and then mounted the camera to one of the extra drive gears. Next, I mounted the receiver and servo motor from the extra car onto the main camera car so that i would be able to turn the camera a full 360 via remote control.
Some of the parts took some dremmel modding, drilling, and grinding to fit just right but when it was all finished it worked like a charm. The camera get about a 300 foot range out in the open, a little less if you’re inside a building with obstructions, and it also sports IR leds for night vision which gets about 30 feet of vision in total darkness, and it also has a 5 hour rechargeable lithium ion battery.
All in all this little project has turned out to be very fun and gets a lot of reactions from people when I take it out in public. I can also split the feed and have it hooked up to my Archos player for recording or I have it connected to my HP 2133 mini note UMPC that I can throw in a back pack and tether to my cell phone and allow the video feed to be viewed remotely via online and control the laptop with a mini bluetooth pda keyboard that I keep folded up in my pocket.
The guys over at i-hacked have written an article about opening a lock by using only a picture of the key for it.
Pretty interesting idea and it makes sense logically, I might have to try this in the near future, it could come in handy on simple locks if you don’t have a set up bump keys around.
See the article here Duplicating A Key From Only A Picture
For the more curious types of people, there has always been the want to find out what kind of data is hidden on those mag stripes on the back of your drivers license, credit cards, and other ID cards. I’ve been dabbling in magstripe gear for a couple of years now and it’s really astonishing the kind of info they will put onto a college ID card.
What do you need to read magstripe cards? Only a card reader and some free open source software. You can even make a reader if you want to save money!
Once you’ve got a reader and the software, it’s really easy to use. Depending on which reader you have, you either have to run StripSnoop in character mode (if your reader connects through your keyboard port) or just run it normally if you have a serial card reader. To run it in character mode, just use -c for the arguments when you run the program. Once you run the program, all you have to do is run your card through your reader and it will output the data that is on that card.
There are a few things to keep in mind. Depending on your reader, you may or not see all the info. If you have a track one reader, it will only read track one (of the three on the card), if you’ve a track two reader, you’ll only see track so and so on. There are only three tracks on magstripe cards.
I’ve been told if you just move the card up a few millimeters you can read another track, but that has yet to work for me and my two readers.
For information on how to read the data that is given to you with StripeSnoop, please see this documentation:
Track Format of Magnetic Stripe Cards
Magnetic Stripe Examples: standard cards
Next up were the alcohol tests. I used 91% rubbing alcohol, very cheap at wal-mart. I soaked each check for 10 minutes in the acetone.
The first check was with the Pentel RSVP pen.
This was the second best check out of the bunch. Not only had the ink just about disappeared, but the back of the check was perfect. There is only one downside. That red dye I was talking about earlier really showed up this time. There were also a couple red spots on the front of the check. Not to apparent, but they are right by the “Pay to the order of” part.
Second check was with the Pilot G2 Gel pen.
Not a very good job, this ink just wanted to stay on there and smear. There is a prominent red dot in the middle of the check as well. A second red dot almost in the same place as the last check too. Again, the back of the check was absolutely fine.
And finally, the third and last alcohol test, the Bic Round Stic.
The best results all day. This check I would feel comfortable washing and trying to use it. There was one SUPER small red spot you can hardly see and another larger, but still damn small red spot, both of which are barely noticeable. You can’t make out any features of the check, who it was made out to, how much it was worth, etc. The back of the check is completely fine as well.
Next up, Final thoughts!–>
This was a very cool test to see the likely hood of my checks being washed, I don’t use checks often and I probably never will after this 
- The best results with the inks tested were with alcohol. Even though I didn’t try with regular acetone, the nail polish really killed the back of the checks whereas the alcohol didn’t do anything to the backs.
- I’ve heard of some people putting tape over the signatures, but I did not even try. I figured it’d be more of a pain trying to get the tape to either stay on or take off than to just forge a signature.
- It looks as if you use gel ink pens, there is a really tough chance of anyone washing your checks. They seem to be a good ink to use against common chemicals.
- Remember if you’re sending checks through the mail there are some precautions you can take to avoid check washing.
- Always drop off your checks at the post office, never mail them from your home mailbox.
- If you have to send a check, make sure it’s wrapped up nicely.
- If you no longer need a check for whatever reason, SHRED IT!!!
- One final note, all the checks that kept the back colors/text (the alcohol tests) all changed from a grey to a blue background. What does that mean? There was probably some dye in the paper to guard against this type of attack.
Since I posted about check washing, I’ve had some people ask about how to determine the polarity of the inks that you’re using and the polarity of the solvent. Unless you remember from high school chemistry (or work in a chem related field), you probably don’t know how to tell. I won’t put up a whole chemistry lesson, since all this can be found in any chemistry textbook or online.
The acetone in the check washing experiment is a non-polar liquid and dissolves non-polar solutes. So our ink would need to be non-polar. The only way to tell this is to just go and test different inks. The Pilot G2 Gel pen would probably be considered non-polar. Gasoline is also a non-polar liquid.
An example of a polar solvent would be water. So you can see why the inks are probably non-polar in their makeup.
There is actually simple ways to tell polarity. Here is a site with a very simple method to determine polarity. http://www.gelcandlemaking.com/section4.html
Links for more info on polarity:
The first tests I did were with the nail polish remover, whose main ingredient is acetone. I soaked each check for 10 minutes in the acetone.
The first check was with the Pentel RSVP pen.
As you can see, I think you’d have a tough time cashing that. Not exactly good results and not to mention that the entire back of the check had turned completely white! All the security stuff was gone, even the line to sign your name!
Second check was with the Pilot G2 Gel pen.
This did a pretty damn fine job. No markings on the front that are totally obvious of washing, I think if I had left it in longer, it might have gotten rid of more of the ink. However, again, the back was completely white, so that isn’t going to work.
I should note that at this time I noticed some red dye in the acetone. I can only think of this as some security dye in the check, however, on this check and the first, neither had any red stains.
And finally, the third and last acetone test, the Bic Round Stic.
Not so great. Kinda suprised me that the cheapest pens available worked pretty decently. Again, the back of the check was completely blank.
Next up, Alcohol tests!–>
When someone on the forums posted about check washing, I knew it was something I had to try. The term has been around for a while but there are less than half a million hits when you search on google for it. The process is actually extremely simple and anyone can do it.
What is check washing? It is simply the process of washing the check in order to get rid of any writing on it to (usually) change the payee and amount.
Understanding why check washing works requries some chemistry knowledge. You first need to know the polarity of the ink that the check is written in. You need to match the polarity of the ink with teh solvent. Unless you have some education in chemistry, you probably won’t know how to figure out the polarity of the dye contained in the ink, and is way beyond the scope of this article.
So thus begins my day of washing checks. I went to the local wallyworld to pick up some supplies.
Next up, Acetone tests!–>
UPDATE!!!!!! I posted a short post on ink polarity for those interested here: How to determine ink polarity.
