Apple Keyboard Hack Proved Possible

Slashdot reports that Apple keyboards are vulnerable to hackers’ attacks due to the complexity of their inner workings, which include RAM and flash memory. According to the report, the hack can potentially place keyloggers and malware directly into the device’s firmware.

To make matters even worse, the author of this “proof of concept” has also published the presentation and code in a PDF that’s free to download for anyone on the planet. The vuln is undoubtedly enticing to hackers, some of which are likely to create one or more exploits for the flaw in question. To better understand how this discovery has turned into a potential security issue, we offer you a few excerpts from the published document.

For ethical reasons, the firmware modification we describe is benign. The firmware is modified so that the LED under the CAP S LOC K key of the keyboard will flash momentarily when the keyboard is first plugged into a system. However, malicious payloads can be developed by individuals with mal-intent. Read more

WiFi to Replace Ancient Radio Waves Technology

Although these things have been around for quite some time now, I’ve only recently decided to give some more though and attention to the WiFi Radio concept, and I was pretty impressed to find out that’s it’s actually a lot more popular and widespread than I previously thought. I have never been a classic radio fan, since most radio hosts annoy me to the point that I just want to smash the radio with a baseball bat. But over the years I have tested some Internet radio stations and I can’t say I was disappointed. After Yahoo launched their new Messenger 9, I also had a brief “stint” at listening to some Yahoo music stations. Read more

Flash in the Can

Hard on the heels of Hitachi’s 5 terabyte hard drive (see below) comes more data storage news, this time the promise of cheaper and more reliable and longer lasting solid state drives (SSDs). Later this year Samsung are about to start production on 64 and 128Gb SSDs, with 256Gb drives in the pipeline later in the year. The Flash memory modules are mounted inside a metal case that’s the same size and can directly replace standard SATA II type hard drives in laptops, and since there are no moving parts they are not only faster than HDDS but they also out-perform and consume less power than rival first generation SSDs.

How Flash Memory Works

Flash memories are solid state electronic devices with random access memory capabilities used for fast digital information storage. They are used in a wide range of applications, such as storing BIOS routines in typical digital computers, as medium capacity hard drives for digital cameras or as memory cards for laptop computers and video consoles.

The technology used to manufacture flash memories is based on EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) chips, which consist of memory banks formed of storing cells disposed in a grid of columns and rows. A basic storing cell has two MOS-FET transistors at each intersection, and are separated by an oxide layer. The two transistors are known as the floating gate and the control gate. Read more

Is This The One? £99 Laptop Launches next Week

It had to happen sooner or later. We’re already accustomed to laptops costing less than £300, and if you don’t mind downsizing there’s the excellent Asus Eee PC for £200 or thereabouts but now Elonex have beaten everyone with a laptop selling for just £99. It’s called The One and it’ll be on sale from next week. It’s aimed at school students, which also explains why it is being launched at the 2008 Education Show on February 28th.

Like the Eee PC and OLPC X0 it runs on Linux, and has a compact 7-inch screen but don’t let that put you off. It can do almost anything a full blown Windows or Mac PC can do, including surf the web, send and receive emails using its built-in wi-fi adaptor, it can play and share multimedia files and it comes with a full office suite of programs. Read more