The Three Ninjas

The Unholy Trinity of Bloggers

Categories: Hacks

Hackers 1 : Network Admin 0

Jul12

by CodeNinja

Published on: July 12, 2010

Categories: Hacks

Tags: Hackers, Hacks, Taking it Back

Comments: No Comments

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Hackers: Taking it Back

I forget exactly when this incident happened. I do remember it was towards the end of the University season (either the year end, or midway). It was in my second to last year in University, and everyone was rushing about trying to finish papers, coursework and get everything handed in on time.

Of course the Lords of Chaos were out in force, and the Universities Network was down, and had been for about a week, people were seriously starting to panic. The network at the time was Windows 95 running of a Novell network. Now somehow (no info was ever posted) the windows image had become corrupted. You could log onto the network, and it would copy the global copy of windows to your workstation ok, only winsock, and several other network important files/libs were corrupt meaning windows could not talk to the network. This had a knock-on problem of all the program files & user data were stored on network drives. Basically you were left with a corrupt and damaged version of windows that was of no use to anyone.

Now some of the computer labs had computers that also had local copies of windows on them, for specific software/applications. Unfortunately these were not set up to use the network, or the internet, in fact they had been set up specifically to be unable to use the network. (for security and to help prevent the pirating of specialised software)

After a few days of no net-access a friend and myself got fed up and decided to do something about it. We found one of the small labs with local copy windows machines, and using some of the libraries off the corrupt net-work versions, plus manually rewriting sever config files we were able to get two machines fully running on the uni’s network, and hence the internet. So there we were happily using the internet to plan the weekends fun when a Lecturer wandered into the lab.

“What are you guys doing in here?”

“err, just finishing some coursework to email in”

“What, do you think I’m stupid? The network is down”

I pointed at my screen and invited her to come look, pointing at a couple of websites to show it was working, and pointed out since we were desperate to finish our coursework we “fixed” the two machines we were using. She looked thoughtful for a while, then asked could we do the same to all the others in the lab, since she had an important lesson that afternoon that she had already put off once due to the broken network.

It was another week and a half before they fixed the network and all the universities computers were usable. But for that week and a half there was one small computer lab that was fully functional, and its location was spread about like a secret. After all, if everyone knew about it, you’d never get a free computer.

I like to think we helped a few people be a little less stressed in the run up to exams.

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Reclaiming the word Hacker

Jul07

by CodeNinja

Published on: July 7, 2010

Categories: Hacks

Tags: Hackers, Hacks, HOPE, Taking it Back

Comments: 1 Comment

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Hackers: Taking it Back

As The Next HOPE draws near I figured now would be an appropriate time for me to say a few words about the misappropriation of the term “Hacker“. To quote Randal from Clerks II. “I’m taking it back”

How often do you seen mention these days like :-

“Hacker steals hundreds of credit card details” (Hello, that’s not Hacking its credit card fraud).
“Hacker defaces ****’s website” (Try Vandalism not Hacking.)
“Hacker steals companies data to sell” (Try Industrial Espionage)

Yes there are people out there that do illegal things, a lot of them can be described as Skript Kiddies, crackers, thieves, vandal, humans. Yes there are Hackers that do illegal things, but that does not mean all Hackers do. There was a case in the UK a few years ago of a doctor who killed hundreds of his patients, does that make all doctors mass murderers?

Wikipedia describes the origin of the term Hack as thus :-

The term “hack” was first used by US university computing centre staff in the mid-1960s. The context determined whether the complimentary or derogatory meanings were implied. Phrases such as “ugly hack” or “quick hack” generally referred to the latter meaning; phrases such as “cool hack” or “neat hack”, to the former. In modern computer programming, a “hack” can refer to a solution or method which functions correctly but which is “ugly” in its concept, which works outside the accepted structures and norms of the environment, or which is not easily extendible or maintainable. The programmer keeps beating on it until a solution is found.

In a similar vein, a “hack” may refer to works outside of computer programming. For example, a math hack means a clever solution to a mathematical problem. The GNU General Public License has been described as a copyright hack because it cleverly uses the copyright laws for a purpose the lawmakers did not foresee. All of these uses now also seem to be spreading beyond MIT as well.

The term should be kept as it was originally intended, to describe those people who are curious about how things work, whether it be computers, networks, phones, electronics, maths, whatever. People who find ways to use things in ways that was not in the original specification. We used to cherish these people as innovators, explorers, etc. (Well apart from the early days when the church would burn them as heretics). We should go back to using “Hacker” as a positive description, and just call criminals “Criminals”. So Media People pay attention, I’m taking the word Hackers back.

To aid in the takeback, I will be posting a series of old Hacks, & examples of Hacking. None of them Illegal, none that caused Harm, Injury, disfigurement. There may have been some upset caused by some, but only in a “How come he can do that? why cant I? It’s not Fair”. They are all just examples of someone being curious, someone using things for more than they were designed for, someone helping others thanks to his playing.

1 Comment

Never send a boy to do a woman’s job.

Mar24

by CodeNinja

Published on: March 24, 2010

Categories: Geek, Hacks, Holiday

Tags: Ada Lovelace, ada2010, Hackers, Holiday

Comments: 3 Comments

Today is “Ada Lovelace Day“.

It is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do.

I decided to take part in helping to promote the achievements of women in fields they do not normally get the credit the deserve in. Deciding to take part was easy, its the actual doing something about it that’s hard. I have spent the last four hours trying to decide who to write about.

Its easy to say “I was not influenced or inspired by particular woman to the point I can post about it“, Yet the more I consider it, the more stupid that statement is. Part of my job entails writing Programs, Scripts, etc. And The first computer Programmer was a lady, and a Lady lady at that. Lady Ada Lovelace (Who today’s named after.)

So who to pick? I then considered maybe using a Character from TV/Film that’s a role model showing you can be cool, feminine, and geeky. Only I could not decide on one of them, either. I have decided to face the fact that I’m useless.

So Instead I will just Raise a pint, and tip my hat to a lost community. “Female Hackers”

Raven Alder, a network administrator at Maryland-based company Intermedia, was utterly boggled by an unexpected question at a hacker convention where she’d just presented a paper. “A reporter asked me how it felt to be the world’s first female hacker,” she recalled. “What the hell?” she spluttered in response. She knew of many other women hackers at the conference, and she was certainly not the first. But the reporter’s question revealed the dilemma facing most women hackers today.

EvilGrrl, a member of the notorious GhettoHackers crew (who won Capture the Flag three years running at Defcon), has noticed this “not existing” problem too. “At conferences, lots of people assume I’m somebody’s girlfriend,” she said, laughing. “I usually just reply that I’m a GhettoHacker and no, I’m not a girlfriend.”

So lets all the Men take a step back, and take today to acknowledge our Female counterparts.

Any in the North Wales area let me know, I’ll get you a pint (or drink of choice)

NOTE: The Title of the Post is a quote from the Character “Acid Burn” from the film Hackers. I’ve never really considered it before, But she really is a poor example of Women in Technology. Looking back on the film, she was the only female in the hacking community shown. I believe in the clips at the end, where the worlds hackers unite, there’s possibly a female hacker shown. Amongst the main group and extended community she is the only one, The other female characters are mothers, or Bimbos. So I appologise, its just that I like the Character, Like the Quote, and Like the Young Angelina Jolie.

3 Comments

Getting More from Your Wii

Mar18

by CodeNinja

Published on: March 18, 2010

Categories: Hacks, Media, Wii

Tags: Hacks, Media Server, Network, Wii

Comments: 4 Comments

This are many things you normally do with your Wii. You can play with it, Sing with it, Get fit with it. Lots of things. But have you ever wanted to do MORE. get more fun with your Wii?

NOTE: Anyone here looking for water sports, please go away now. Unless you are a Good looking Female with an ENTP personality, who should send me her Photo + CV.

This post is about the Nintendo Wii, and how to get more from it. The Ninja Temple got a Wii last weekend. Mainly to get Wii Fit and play the fun looking games with the Balance Board. Only think is, we have not yet got the board, only the Wii. Withing Twenty four hours of receiving the Wii in the post the immortal words were uttered. “Hummmmm! I wonder if we could use this as a media server to stream films/tv from the network?”

After these words were uttered all other projects were dropped and the Wii was studied and hacked/jailbroke/improved. Heres the process we used, in case anyone else out there wants to play media files on a Wii.

NOTE: This is only a “soft mod” you do not open the Wii at any point, or do any physical modifications to the device.

For this you will need 1xSD Card. (we used two cards to save time, but you only really need one).

You need your Wii connected to your wireless network. (You can do this with a none networked Wii, But networked is easier)

You will also need to download a few files off the internet and unzip them.

Phase 1: (Getting the Homebrew Channel)

The HomeBrew channel is a Wii channel that lets you run Applications & Software written by third party’s, extra applications, and games that are made available for you to use by people other than Nintendo. It also helps for you launching Linux apps, or distro’s. So before we can have fun we need to get this on the Wii.

FILE Pack 1: Download <=- Files not stored on this Blog.

Download this pack, and extract the files onto your SD Card. (There should be three folders & four files)
Place the SD Card into the Wii (The slots under the cover at the front.)
Click on the SD Card Icon (Bottom Left), You should get a warning screen (Press OK), You get a black screen with disclaimer (Press 1 )
You now should have a screen with three lines. Homebrew channel, which can be isntalled, DVDx, also can be installed, Bootmii, which possibly will give you an error. Install Homebrew Channel, DVDX. On bootmii option, select “prepare SD card“. After it finishes, install it as boot2 (if possible) or as an IOS.
When your finished, Remove the SD Card and return to computer.

Phase 2: (Fixing the Nintendo Fix to Stop people doing what were doing)

You see, Nintendo did not like people getting full use of their Wii’s so the put a fake empty bit of code in the area most programmers use, this prevents “Other” code being fully run on the Wii. Well we say “Hack The Planet!” and fix this fix. :0)

FILE Pack 2: Download <=- Files not stored on this Blog.

Download this pack, format SD Card. and extract the files onto your SD Card.
Place the SD Card into the Wii
Go to The Homebrew Channel, Press the Home button and select Bootmii (Some Wii’s auto start Bootmii so you can skip this one)
Wadmanager should start.(On ios select, select ios36
Select SD card and (Press A).
Select ios249 from wad folder and (Press A).
change the action to “uninstall wad“, (Press A).
When your finished, Remove the SD Card and return to computer.

Phase 3: (Adding cios)

You need this fix if you want to stream media over the Wii’s WiFi. or if you should want to play “Backup Games”

FILE Pack 3: Download <=- Files not stored on this Blog.

Download this pack, format SD Card. and extract the files onto your SD Card.
Place the SD Card into the Wii
Go to The Homebrew Channel, Press the Home button and select Bootmii (Some Wii’s auto start Bootmii so you can skip this one)
At the beginning you should see ios249 highlighted. Keep pressing left on the wii pad until you see “Do not reload IOS” at the ios select screen, press A.
If you have internet connection, select “Network install“, else select “SD card“, (Press A).
When your finished, Remove the SD Card and return to computer.

Phase 4: (Setting up the final Card)

You are all finished now. You just need to set yourself up for day to day running of Apps. Oh and to add a media player. Basically you can place apps in a folder called apps on the SD Card and they become runnable from the HomeBrew Channel. To get you started :-

Format the SD Card and extract File Pack 1 back onto it. This one has a few applications already on it for Playing Back up Games and fixing a few bugs.

To get a media server on there, Just download and extract to the apps folder. I tried and liked two applications.

1) Geexbox Which is a multi platform media server. The only downside is that it can not access the Wii’s WiFi drivers so will only play of USB harddrives, or using a Wired Network connection. There is a Lite version that can use WiFi.

2)MPlayer CE Which is the one I’m using, It works from the box over the Wii’s WiFi. and plays a good amount of different file formats. And connects to local media, or network media using ftp, Windows Shares, SMB Shares. You do have to edit the smb.conf in the MPlayer_CE folder to add up to 5 network shares (and optional passwords)

And its as easy as that. You can go from Taking a Wii out the box, to having it up and running as a full media server in less than an hour.

Happy Hacking.

P.S. The password for the files listed is: www.wiihacks.com

4 Comments

Hackers Are People Too

Aug09

by CodeNinja

Published on: August 9, 2009

Categories: Hacks

Tags: Hacks

Comments: 2 Comments

Hug a Hacker

I’ve just finished watching the Documentary “Hackers are people Too” A documentary made by Hackers, about Hackers to try and correct the “misrepresentation” the Hacker community gets from the Press & Hollywood.

All in all it was not a bad small documentary at about forty minutes long. I think it could have shown a bit more, and answered a few more questions, and laid some things to rest, but overall it was not too bad.

They mentioned that as a community we are more tolerant of race, age, religion, looks, Since most meet up online for years before ever meeting in real life, so friendships are made purely by personality and intelligence. The statement reminded me of the old “Hackers Manifesto” by The Mentor, and I thought I’d post it on here as a reminder of the old days.

(more…)

2 Comments

Micro$oft 0: GothNinja 1

Mar20

by GothNinja

Published on: March 20, 2009

Categories: Hacks, xbox 360

Tags: Electronics, Hacks, Technology, xbox 360

Comments: No Comments

Tales of My delve into the world of Micro$oft repair work.

I had put out requests during the day yesterday for the parts I needed to repair my xbox, and rectify the inherited design flaw of the system.

So i had a half dozen M4 bolts (always get more than you need in case things go wrong) Ideally they should have been about 10mm long thread, mine were about an inch and a half, but no problems that’s what hacksaws were invented for. A dozen Metal Washers, and a dozen Nylon Washers.

I had the correct tools, Thanks to the DemonP who actually owned some torx drivers, a very handy thing to own, and something I am going to get this weekend.

Step 1) Dismantle xbox to as many bits as you can… Done

Step 2) Remove the badly designed Xclamp from the back of the motherboard, and remove heat-sink… Done

Step 3) Using the m4 bolts, with washers (Remembering to use the NONE CONDUCTIVE ones next to the motherboard)

Step 4) Semi reassemble xbox, mainly to the point its safe to be plugged into the electricity supply, and making sure the DVD player is plugged in to prevent xbox live bans. Plug into power, and switch on. Leave it running for 10-15 minutes without the fan on the GPU to get it nice and hot, so the solder melts back on connection.

Step 5) Switch off and let cool down, The heat-sink will be “oww oww it burns.. .arrrggghh my fingers melted..” Hot.

Step 6) Look at the vast amount of xbox parts scattered about, scratch your head a bit, make a promise to pay more attention to the how you dismantle the next thing you take apart, and rebuild.

Step 7) Power up and Play……

Doing it Yourself

Cost: £0.00 (ok, if you don’t have the bolts that may cost you £1 maybe £2)

Time: Hour or Two tops.

Sending it off for Micro$oft to repair.

Cost: Minimum £60

Time: 3 weeks turnaround

I know which I prefer…

The Culprit

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The Dreaded 1RLOD

Mar18

by GothNinja

Published on: March 18, 2009

Categories: Hacks, xbox 360

Tags: Electronics, Hacks, Technology, xbox 360

Comments: 6 Comments

So I have a free evening with no plans, nothing urgent requiring my attention, so have the opportunity to go a bit further on re5. Try and get past the heavily armed zombies who had me pinned down with their machine gun fire when i last played.

So a quick jump on the sofa, power up the xbox and….

e74

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now my xbox elite is about a year and a half old, so unless it gets the full RROD (which comes under a special 3 year warranty) its not under cover. So I have no cover for this VERY COMMON problem, that’s a stupid Micro$oft design flaw which should have been sorted many version back… (Not that i’m bitter or anything!)

So. While lying on the floor clutching the re5 boxset and crying, I had to decide what to do…

1) Send it off to Micro$oft and pay the ransom for getting it repaired (plus 3 week turnaround). This option also costs shipping charges, and prices start from £60 going up for how much they need to fix, and i do not trust the money grabbing *!$£^*%!£$”&.

2) Take it somewhere else to be repaired, and pay whatever they charge, and have a week or sown downtime…

It was at this point a small voice at the back of my head said. “Err didn’t you spend years in university doing an electrical/electronic engineering degree? Don’t you have a shed load of electronics qualifications? Aren’t you supposed to be able to design motherboard, and build them from components upwards, even programing them?”

“Damn right, strange voice in my head! There’s nothing a Micro$oft engineer can do that in theory I can not.“

So, my plans are to collect equipment i need, and tomorrow fix my xbox myself (And remove the design flaw at the same time preventing the issue coming up again!)

So stay tuned for my exploits delving into the insides of my xbox, to find where all those characters live!

1RLOD

6 Comments

I know you’re a sweet little Jailbreaker

Jan21

by CodeNinja

Published on: January 21, 2009

Categories: Hacks, iPhone

Tags: Hacks, iphone

Comments: 4 Comments

All together now…

You know you’re a sweet little codemaker
Oh yeah
And I know you’re a sweet little jailbreaker
I know you are, baby!

I made up my mind
Tired of wasting all my precious time
You’ve got to be all mine, all mine
Oh, foxy lady!

(Jimi Hendrix – Foxy Lady)

This post is best read while listening to “Foxy Lady” By Hendrix…

OK, So I have had my nice new iPhone for a month now, so that’s long enough to keep it new and work out how to use it, so its now time to JailBreak the sucker and get some Linux functionality on there.

So. I’m armerd with the following :-

iphone

An Apple 3G 16Gig iPhone
A usb link cable
QuickPwn
Some Cans of Beer
A low boredom threshold.

So Lets begin.

Step 1: Open can, and pour drink into a pint glass (I’m civilized you know). Plug iphone into computer and back it all up using itunes.

Step 2: Run QuickPwn, and follow the helpfull instructions, Open Can and drink beer (OK, we doing techy stuff now, ignore niceties like glasses it gets in the way)

Step 3: Reboot iPhone with all your fingers crossed, Grab another Drink while waiting……… “Please Come Back UP!”

Step 4: Unplug JailBroken iphone, and start adding sshd, Linux commands, and useful applications.

Step 5: Finish off the beers while watching NCIS… Why Do I never meet Geeks like Abby!!!

4 Comments