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Attack Of The Dreamcasts

Posted by Hemos on from the swirly-logos-coming-at-you dept.

kevin_conaway writes "A pair of coders are now suggesting that it is possible, with a modified dreamcast system running Linux to sneek into an office building and stick it on a network drop and leave. The dreamcast will then probe for ways to connect to the outside world. They say they have created similar software for iPAQs and a special bootable cdroms for print servers and similar boxes. Just a reminder that are networks need to be as secure on the inside as they should be on the outside. Get the story here."

2 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. Did it. by Skyshadow · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Back when I was in high school (1994 or '95), we put together a small 386 -- no case, no nothin' -- with a NIC and stashed it above the library computer lab. This was pretty much just to see if we could, which as I think about it seems like the reasoning behind most of what I did in high school. Well, at least the things I did in high school that didn't involve girls.

    We used it to run a dump of all the packets on the network and get pretty much all the passwords used by anyone. We printed out a copy and sent it to the bozo they had in charge of IT, and he called in a mess of expensive consultants to reload everything on the network.

    Of course, they didn't fix the basic problem or find our little friend. For all I know it's still running up above the 'ol drop ceiling -- we were to chicken to try and retrieve it. Of course, this was a private school, so the real joke was on us (the clue -- consultants were being paid for by our own stupid selves).

    --
    Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
  2. Wouldn't it be cheaper and just as effective by pete-classic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    to just burn a CDR that boots Linux and does all the same stuff on a PC with any of the top X ethernet cards? Set it up to stubbornly ignore all keyboard input and never display anything on the screen. Write "coaster" on it with a black magic marker, drop it in some currently unused PC and hit power/reset and haul ass. Do it at 4:50 PM on a Friday and you'll probably have to 9:00 AM on monday to own some other box on a more permanent basis.

    Hell, you might be able to modify a tomsrtbt to do this and wipe (or dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0; dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fd0) the diskette once the ramdisk is loaded.

    IOW, this whole thing strikes me as more of a "stunt" than a "hack."

    -Peter