0xBADCAB1E

Yesterday, I met a friend. Nothing special about that, one little detail was different than when I met my other friends. I had never met that friend before. I knew that nice guy from the Internet, I guess I got in touch with him 6 years ago. In that time I was surfing on some hacking boards, and we exchanged jabber id’s. From that time on we stayed in contact, many things changed, there was an evolution. When I think back, I see how things are moving, going on, people getting smarter, changing their ideologies, and following different goals. Many people gave up hacking during that time, this guy, and myself are still following the same goal, we want to understand how things really work. So yesterday, eddy14, came to Bochum, and I showed him the university, the nice side, with the parcs, ice seller, girls, sun,… and the not so nice side, dark, concrete, no nature, nerds, … no girls. He was quite impressed. After we went to my place and hacked some common air card, type 3 to make it compliant with a normal PCMCIA port. Quite good result I have to admit. I can only recommend to read his blog, yesterday he released a very interessting tool but read for yourself

Not very interesting for my readers, but yeah, I wanted to write something about this event.

Kind regards,
Kabel

Today I was very motivated and decided to cook something. I’m not used to cook special things, and wanted to do dig into it for once. This is why I picked up a recipe here, bought everything that was needed and tried hard to make the best of it, the result:

It tasted very good, and was quite fun creating it, so maybe I’ll do it more often

Kind regards,
Kabel

PS: As people keep telling me that it does not look good, I have to say the following: Please consider the obfuscation performed by my mobile phone camera and the bad light conditions in my kitchen. Honestly it looked very good.

Yesterday, I planed to drive back to Luxembourg for the weekend. Due to the bad weather and the bad driving conditions, I finally decided to stay in Bochum.

My hacker colleagues form the University had already some plans for the weekend, and they managed to convince me to join them for a nice evening. So, my Friday night began at 18:47, with a “U-Bahn” that did not come, due to the bad weather… fortunately the next was able to pick me up, and I drove to the “Bochum Hauptbahnhof” where Joshua, a nice guy form the uni lives. tmh and h0yt3r were already there and we went to Joshuas place to have some chill-out time, with some beers, food and a movie. It was fun, until I literally exploded his chef seat :S (I bought him a new one today, knowing the time one passes on such a chair when you study at the RUB, I know I had to do it, and the faster the better).

After this we left the building at 23:00 and took the U-35 to the university. We weren’t alone, unfortunately a group of very “strange” young people were singing, and making stupid things in the train… we hoped they would get out of the train before the university. We were hoping wrong … they all got out of the train at the RUB, like we did. We were lucky, as we found out that there was another party at the uni, the Theology guys had orgnaized one too… the strange people all went there

The rest of the night, we spend chilling and listening to music in the front of the lecture halls. There were plenty of people and the ambiance was just perfect.

So, I had a great time with people I knew for quite a while (tmh, h0yt3r were people I got in touch with in my early Internet times and I was following their progress for all this time). So you see, Geeks, Nerds and whatever names people want to give us, we also socialize sometimes, and go away from our PCs, and out of our dark rooms.

As a conclusion I have to say that the party was good, but I’m not a very big fan of parties and I could not party all weekends, but for once in a while it is okay, looking forward to the next “IB-United” party!

Best regards,
Kabel

P.S: I put a new page online: “about me” The page is briefly describing the author of this blog.
If you know me:
Feel free to tell me, if you find that the description is not matching my personality.
Else If you don’t know me:
Feel free to get an impression on who I am.

Hey, as some people wanted to see my home office, here you go, please enjoy KOC: Kabel Operations Center

Sorry for the bad quality of the picture my phone cam was not able to do better.

Note that the I can operate all these laptops with only one mouse and keyboard, thanks to synergy, a TCP KVM Switch running on, at least, the 3 operating system you can see on this pictures. Furthermore, copy & paste from one OS into the next is no problem, which is providing a lot of comfort in everyday life.
I’m currently using the following operation systems:

* freeBSD 8.0. The laptop on the left, mainly monitoring servers, traffic, services etc…

* Mac OS X. Laptop in the middle and the 24″ screen. Mainly for chatting, showing pdf’s papers I have to work on and movies (This laptop is the worst thing I ever bought, you can simply not work on such a foo, but at least, I tried :’( )

* A Linux based OS. The 17″ Screen and the Thinkpad on the right. This laptop is mainly used for working and developing

You may have noticed all these lights and lava lamps etc, of course they can be piloted by the PCs you see but more on this in one of the next blog posts.

Regards,
Kabel

Recently I changed the name of my blog to: 0xBADCAB1E (it will be reachable over 0xbadcab1e.lu soon too)
So, why did I chose this name?
I picked this name because I found it a good characterization of my life/hobbies:

* It is hexadecimal, quite a lot of things I do at the moment are expressed in hex, for example in cryptography which is part of my everyday life. All in all the hexadecimal system is quite present in computer sciences, and I like it!

* 0xBADCAB1E is an error code:“0xBADCAB1E (“bad cable”) Error Code returned to the Microsoft eVC debugger when connection is severed to the debugger”[1] Windows debugger, em, interesting, this might show my penchant for opensource software and show my need to disassemble things to find out how they work.

* CAB1E is hexspeak[1] for cable which is English for “Kabel”. As Kabel has been my nick for several years now, this fits perfectly.

* BAD: Well, I don’t consider myself as a being a bad person. So I guess this part of the name will stay the mystery Maybe I’ll find a good explanation for this some day.

During my last “critical infrastructures” lectures I was researching some information about attacks on the Web-Of-Trust as I am digging in this subject at the moment, of course, I’m considering the security aspect of it. Maybe this Web-Of-Trust model is exactly the candidate I’m searching for to show people how important trust is in IT as finally, everything relies on this simple principe of trust…
So during this research I came across the 0xDEADBEEF attack, searching for further information about that topic I saw some pages dedicated to hexspeak. Thats how I came to this new name, which sounds better than that boring “Kabel’s Blog” I used before.

So I hope you like it as much as I do Since this hexadecimal name has only a length of 8 chars it makes it ideal for some further usage, more on this on one of my next blog posts.

Best regards,
Kabel

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak

Last Saturday I was invited to go out with some new acquaintance. In fact at the end I only knew one person of the whole group.
We planed to go to the cinema in Luxembourg city, to watch a movie (that was not on the played any more Fail 1).
23 Minutes before I wanted to leave I got a call (Fail 2 I hate phone calls) plans were changed, we should meet at CineBelval (Fail 3 I hate plan modification in last minutes without any suitable reason).
Well, anyhow I was there 10 minutes before time. As it is usual for me, “Pünktlichkeit ist 10 Minuten vor der Zeit” a friend use to say. Well the people I should meet had more than 20 minutes delay. That makes that I was waiting for half an hour. (Fail 4 I hate people thinking they are worth waiting 30 minutes for them and then not even apologize).
Then the Fails went on… Film should start at 22:00 according to the tickets. Well at 22:00 we wanted to enter the room. The other movie wasn’t over yet. We had to wait 15 minutes in front of a closed door. We got told plenty of times that we had to wait. But guess what… it was the wrong door! Nobody was able to tell us that we are not allowed to get in through this door, until they let people in.
Then we had to enter through another door. Well, when we came in the room, maybe 30 seconds after the doors were open, immediately the lights got turned off. Great fun to find your place in that giant cinema… where there are some hundred places but mostly 30 are occupied. Never will go to that cinema again.
All in all, a lot of fails. And I didn’t mentioned that I felt really bad with this persons as they were really partly primitive… and people knowing me know that I’m very tolerant, but those people managed to make me ashamed. Last time I went out with them… for sure!

I’m not used to go out often, and mostly when I go out I make sure to meet enough geeks and nerds or other scientists, this time I didn’t. FAIL

Yesterday, an awful event happened in Germany. A 17 year old kid ran amok in Winnenden. I’m very sorry for this and I can’t understand such actions.

As always, plenty of news are published in every newspapers and news reports on TV. As always, these news vary from one paper to the other… Thats was the trigger for my research, I wanted the TRUTH. Has that guy been in that forum?! I couldn’t believe that, because it sounds to easy… and would give plenty arguments to intensify the control of home computers.

According to Heribert Rech this log was found on the PC of Tim. It shows a discussion in a kind of board, http://krautchan.net/

As you can see, this board claims that everything was setup and that the published log had nothing to do with the reality. Here the doubts are repeated, but who can know now for sure? Who can you trust? Nothing is online anymore… except some very interesting log-extracts in google-cache.
As said at the beginning, I had my doubt about the existence of this chat, now I have more certitude, but everyone can judge by himself:
First of all, according to page they are a photoshop comunity, stange comunity where I repeatedly found thinks like this in the logs (7th entry)
But back to my investigation, I found some dialog between Bernd(The guy shown on the logs in the newspapers) and Shaky:
Shaky, gib mal die IP von 485465 raus. (5th entry traduction: “Shaky, give me the IP of 485465“). 485465 was the ‘Nr.’ published by the newspapers. I even found another log, where Shaky replies to the question with an IP: 192.168.1.12. According to the time and date, this could have in fact been the published discussion. His conversation partner certainly behaved in a very strange way, why should he have asked for the IP else?
It even gets better. Apparently, censorship has been applied in that forum, on a thread related to “Amoklauf” and that right after the date on the logs you can see in the newspapers, but have a look yourself: Here(6th entry).

Now everyone can make his own opinion, or even dig further in the logs, as I did. This “Photoshop community” definitely has a strange idea of such a community. Have a look (6th entry)
I don’t want to discredit anyone, but there seems to be irregularities in one of the versions, either the media didn’t get it, or the board fakes. I only want the truth, an independent media that tells me how things really are. I hope I could help you to understand whats going on out there, fakes and manipulations everywhere. Who can you trust? No one!

Erstaunlich aber wahr. Mein Internet Provider (Kabelinternet in Luxemburg Stadt) sperrt DNS Requests zu twitter.com

Wieso das? Hat jemand eine Idee was daran stört? Will man kleine Kinder daran hindern zuviel persönliches über sich preis zugeben? Oder ist es gar ein Befehl des Staates?! Hat es was mit der Aktion von CASES: “Nackt im Internet” zu tun? (Nein das war eher ein Scherz, die Leute von CASES sind echt cool drauf) Wie lange wird es dauern bis diese Seite hier auch zensiert wird?
Für die Leute die das gleiche erleben müssen, es reicht den DNS Server zu ändern um wieder an die Seiten zu kommen, bei Linux einfach die /etc/resolv.conf anpassen.
Bei Windows einfach unter den TCP/IP Einstellungen den neuen DNS in die Maske eintragen.
Ich nehme immer die 131.246.9.116, da das ein Running Gag im C3L ist, jeder kennt die IP auswendig, da stützt nämlich immer der DNS Server ab. Ich glaube das der C3L Server auch gleich mal als DNS Server dienen wird, es reicht so langsam mit dem blöden Gespiele!

Ich werde meinen ISP mal an mailen und mich beklagen ich würde für das ganze Internet zahlen, und nicht nur für ein Teil, mir reichts so langsam echt.

Mein Mandat, wie auch das Mandat von klenge_Feitz im Universitätsrat hat am 5.01 begonnen. Eben haben wir erfahren, dass am 21.01 eine Versammlung des Universitätsrates stattgefunden hat, von der wir nix wussten.
Ich finde so etwas eine absolute Schande und verweißt auf die Professionalität der Uni. Wenn die nicht mal fähig sind die Mailingliste upzudaten sollen sie mir das überlassen, ich hab da weniger Probleme mit denk ich mal.
In der Versammlung ging es ja auch nur um so unwesentliche Sachen wie, ob der Rektor der Uni ein neues Mandat kriegen soll oder nicht. Ich denke mal, dass da Studenten auch die Möglichkeit gegeben sein sollte ihre Stimme abzugeben.
Des weitern wurden in dem Bericht, den ich über den Mailverteiler der Studentenvertreter erhalten habe, über Unregelmäßigkeiten Diskutiert, unter anderem wurde eine geheime Wahl abgelehnt, war ja dann klar dass keiner gegen den Rektor gewählt hat.

Nunja, Morgen nach der Prüfung gehts dann zum Rektor unserer Fakultät um mal informiert zu werden was das Spielchen soll.

Es geht um diesen Artikel:
Forscher der Uni Luxemburg entdecken große Sicherheitlücken bei Schnurlostelefonen
Im Gegenteil zu andern Medien wird in diesem Artikel wenigstens der CCC genannt, jedoch wird das ganze als Projekt der Uni.lu ausgegeben.
Da ich jedoch öfters Mittwoch Abends mit Krater und/oder Ralph über diesen DECT-Hack diskutiert habe, und es so verstanden hatte, dass er einer der Initiatoren ist, und auch sehr viel Zeit darin investiert hat, fand ich es schade, dass er nicht mal erwähnt wurde… So kam dann mein Kommentar in der Zeitung zustande:
“Relativ witzig, finde ich, dass in den luxemburgischen Medien, immer wieder die Universität Luxemburg in einer Linie mit dem DECT-Hack geschildert wird. Soweit ich jedoch informiert bin, hat der CCC-Trier, sowie der CCC-Darmstadt weitaus mehr mit dem Projet zu tun gehabt als die Uni.lu. Klar will ich nicht bestreiten, dass die Mitglieder von den CCC’s teilweise an Forschungen an den aufgezählten Unis beteiligt sind, der DECT hack, ist allerdings ein Projekt vom CCC gewesen, und _nicht_ einer Uni.
In meinen Augen werden hier Leute mit dem Ruhm des DECT Hacks geschmückt, die nur geringfügig dafür gearbeitet haben. Der Name von Andreas Schuler, Initiator des Projektes, wird hier nirgendwo genannt… nur weil er keine Forschung an einer Uni(.lu) macht? In den deutschen Medien scheint es nicht so wichtig zu sein, N24, zB hat eine Live Demo von dem Hack gebracht, in der man 3 Hacker sieht, und sie legen da weniger Wert drauf wer nun an welcher Uni oder überhaupt Forschung im Uni-Sinne Betreibt.
Soviel zu meiner Wortmeldung.”

Wie es aussieht wurde dieser Kommentar kruzerhand rauszensiert, resp. nie veröffentlicht. Ich hab mich dann entschieden es hier zu publizieren =) Wahrscheinlich hat mein Blog eh einen höheren Page Rank