259: Calculators Changed My Life

Brandon Wilson (@brandonlwilson) shared his stories about hacking TI calculators (and other things). TICalc.org has the latest on getting started yourself including Z80 assemblers, or start on Brandon's website: brandonw.net Bradon will be speaking at Hardwear.io, a security conference for the hardware and security community. The conference consists of training (11th - 12th Sept 2018) and conference (13th - 14th Sept 2018). It is in The Hague, Netherlands. His talk is The Race to Secure Texas Instruments Graphing Calculators. He will also be hosting a village called Dumping the ROM of the Most Secure Sega Genesis Game Ever Created. Topics: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:33 Brandon Wilson 00:01:39 Lightning Round 00:02:37 Calculators! 00:03:58 Programmable calculators, using TI BASIC 00:05:00 Ti-85, programmable via assembly language 00:06:35 App store for my calculator? 00:07:34 How does TI prevent cheating? 00:09:41 Testguard for teachers 00:12:53 Some are WiFi capable 00:13:41 How Brandon learned to hack the TI 00:15:12 Processors used in the TI calcs 00:16:39 What tools are available for reverse engineering? 00:17:42 Breaking the keys 00:18:49 Flash unlock protection 00:20:14 TI hacker community 00:21:32 TI used 512-bit RSA keys 00:22:32 Key broken after 2 months of brute force 00:22:58 TI threatened the first key breaker 00:23:31 Built a distributed community to attack keys 00:24:38 TI was not happy 00:25:03 DMCA takedown notice 00:27:28 EFF offered to help 00:29:30 The ethics of circumventing TIs protection 00:33:23 Calculators as a platform for learning HW/FW 00:35:11 Hackers' responsibility toward the hacked 00:39:05 Hacks Brandon is uncomfortable with 00:42:55 Bug bounties, are they effective? 00:44:02 Brandon's other projects 00:44:26 TI calculator processors used all over 00:44:50 Sega Genesis 00:47:54 Code execution via the Sega Genesis CD 00:53:35 Calculators changed my life (back up) 00:54:21 Other projects, USB 00:55:31 Abuse the USB protocol 00:58:24 Modifying USB flash drive FW 01:03:21 Reverse engineering tools 01:06:13 Hardwear.io conference, Brandon's hacking village 01:09:22 Brandon's Final Thought 01:10:19 Outro 01:11:20 Final Quote