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3COM's Ergo Audrey Hacked
It looks like the 3COM Ergo Audrey hacking scene is finally taking off. A guy named Sowbug has hacked the 3COM Ergo Audrey to shell. He has pictures of it here(1) and here(2). Another site has opened to cover this hack, here(3). And of course the Linux Hacker messageboards are covering it quite a bit.
You lazy dweebs, check the links before you distribute your ignorance to the world. I swear, /. is a colossal stupidity amplifier.
As was widely reported (including here on Slashdot) Audrey ran QNX. So no, you wouldn't see any Linux in there. I was on the dev team for Audrey at 3Com, I've read the procedure described, and it would in fact work, he obtained a shell in a Photon pterm.
I'm pleased to see that people will get some use out of the hardware. We put a lot of work into the thing, it was highly depressing that 3Com was/is in such financial trouble that it was terminated before we got a chance to rev software and address many of the complaints people had about the product. (I personally would like to buy all of the available inventory on Ebay and shove them one by one sideways up 3Com's inept CEO Bruce Claflin's ass, a sentiment shared by many of the company's long-suffering shareholders - but I digress).
What is not widely known even within the product team was that there was an internal under-the-table project to run Linux on the Audrey almost from go. The big hang-up was getting X to run, and fit in the 16MB of flash in the Audrey. The main advantage to QNX was the availability of the Photon environment, which was a great deal lighter-weight than X with a toolkit.
Progresso Black Beans, eh? Yeah, someone's gonna get owned unless he takes some Pepto.
Got Rhinos?
The first thing I noticed was the beans also.
I feel the beans cast an air of suspicion over this whole thing.
Its like this guy is working on his computer but instead of drinking a Coke, he just eats a can of beans? That aint right.
here is how he said he did it... Before we complain about borders not lining up, someone who understands this should give us a fair evaluation of his methodology
Um, read his webpage.
He doesn't say anything about even trying to run linux on it. He's managed to get QNX to give him a regular shell prompt on it, and considers that useful. QNX aint a bad OS, so, sure, that's useful.
It's too fuzzy to make out what's on that title bar, but it would be perfectly normal for the QNX gui to put a title bar on a window, wouldn't it?
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Looks exactly like a QNX RTP pterm (photon term) to me...and that's what in the audrey. The top font is the default text font for all QNX windows (unless otherwise specified by the application).
The dirlist looks good too.
not to mention the fact that when he did some digging he came with QNX employees on the names of some binaries...which I know for a fact work there, since I'm also a QNX employee (and work with some of the names mentioned). The rest of the info he's put together looks pretty good as well (as in accurate).
Maybe you should check out the QNX RTP before claiming that these are faked up shots...
Didn't *anybody* follow the first link? This page describes how he actually did it. The reason that it looks like it's running in an Audrey window is because IT IS. He got a shell, all right, NOT by porting Linux to Audrey, but by updating Audrey's flash so to add a QNX shell application on the flash card. He then booted the Audrey and ran the shell. That's what the screenshot is of.
Once again, not a fake.
Right, I *know* this is redundant but as this is the first Wrong comment to reach +3 I will explain.
He did not install linux on his machine. He is using QNX.
He has got a shell running in QNX. It is natural for an OS with a GUI to put a title bar on its windows, is it not?
He got the shell running by adding a new web-page to the CF card which holds the Audrey OS, which had a link when clicked on bought up the shell.
For the people discussing "smudges" and 0-pixel misalignments: get a life. For the people that did not read the article: get a life.
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
"INFAMOUS HACKER SOWBUG ARRESTED BY FBI"
Tuesday, August 7 - Newswire
Today the FBI arrested the infamous hacker
"sowbug" on a criminal complaint from 3com.
The FBI alleges that "sowbug" violated the DMCA
by reverse engineering 3com's "Audrey"
device.
A company spokesperson explained : "sowbug
violated the DMCA by bypassing our elaborate
security mechanisms to prevent unauthorized
access to the operating system. ingenuity
will not be tolerated. We intend to send a message
to the dangerous hacker community that using our
products in ways 3com never considered is totally
unacceptable."
Supporters of the DMCA are calling for the death
penalty, arguing "a mere 5 years imprisonment
is not a strong enough deterrent to free thinking
and research."