RCA / Thomson Modem Hack Discovered

An anonymous reader writes "Those un-employed modem hackers are at it again. The group known as TCNiSO has released a very interesting hardware modification for RCA / Thomson cable modems. The modification is done by grounding the bus clock on the serial EEPROM which throws the device into a diagnostic panic mode. Then by using the debug tools from the embedded console to reprogram the EEPROM, a user can permanently enable a developers menu which gives complete control of the modem, such as modifying the hardware addresses or flashing new firmware. Now if only these guys can figure out how to enable the Bluetooth features on my v710 phone..."

Comments

Re:How long...

[garcia]

Until they are discovered and those modified cable modems are de-serviced?

I was wondering if people could use a modified firmware that would report a valid modem config file back to the ISP when the ISP scans for ones that were not sanctioned.

The ISP could powercycle the modems remotely and push new firmware to all the modems rather easily. I would assume that the pushed firmware would include a way to block unauthorized firmware from connecting to the network.

Who knows if they'd be that interested though?

Re:Don't fuck around w/your modem's MAC.

[Saxton]

That, and is there any real functionality you are able to get from this hack? Didn't seem like it. I am guessing for 95% of the people that do it are going to follow the directions, say "yay I did it" and then forget all about it other than being able to tell their friends that they owned their own cable modem.

*yawn*

-Aaron

Re:Dangerous, and probably illegal.

[Anonymous Coward]

impossible for so many reasons, read up on the phone network, but it is impossible to send any large ammount of electricity down it.

also you can connect up homebrew devices, the only thing you wil degrade is your own private phone network, no one elses.

why would it be a DMCA violation in the first place?
do you even know what it stands for

Hacking cellphones

[null etc.]

Now if only these guys can figure out how to enable the Bluetooth features on my v710 phone...

Try the discussion forums over at wirelessadvisor.com

I posted a teaser message there once regarding the Motorola T720. By using the USB modem cable and a COM port sniffer, I determined that extended AT modem commands were used to synchronize the phone with the desktop. By posting my findings, someone took the initiative and started a Yahoo! group for hacking the T720. Within a month, the group had 400 members and within five months the group had collectively hacked the T720.

Re:Don't fuck around w/your modem's MAC.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Uncapping or raising your cap is likely in violation of your contract and grounds for termination. Basically if you did this, you could be charged with theft of service.

Great way to lose your service.

[papasui]

This violates most acceptable use policies, regardless if your own the cable modem or not changing your modems mac address would fall under hacking as your could cause service interruptions on your network segment for other people. Your paying for internet service not the right to fuck around with a companies million dollar network. We had a kid get arrested for this, changed his modems mac everyday but never changed his nic's. Pretty trivial to track him down.

Re:Cue FBI raids in 5...4...3..

[Vo0k]

Resident sniffer/logger.
Simple Firewall.
Monitor, blinking LEDs on certain kinds of packets arriving.
"Wake on ring" if not present by default.
"extra secret storage" in unused flash.
Changing MAC address...
*less* bandwidth (throttling your uplink, etc)

Re:Don't fuck around w/your modem's MAC.

[Sc00ter]

Some versions of the firmware won't allow bootp files to be recived from the ethernet interface. This hack lets you change the firmware to a version that does allow it. So it may still be a required step.

Re:Don't fuck around w/your modem's MAC.

[Shakrai]

I just wish the US ISPs would open their eyes and allow us higher speeds, like almost the rest of the world.

Not to disagree with you because I like fast downloads as much as the next guy but how much bandwidth do we really need with current technology? Hell, Roadrunner is upgrading from 3.0mbits to 5.0. What do you really need all that speed for? At 3.0 I can download an entire Linux CD in less then 40 minutes.

If you bump up the speed to insane amounts on the current infrastructure (what's the tops for a cable modem node? 45-50mbits down and 10mbits up IIRC) you'll just wind up with Joe Script Kiddie slowing everybody down for the sake of his illegal copy of XP. Not to mention all the owned Windows boxes out there being used for DDoS attacks that don't really need limitless amounts of bandwidth at their disposal.

I would like to see higher upload speeds because it's really annoying to try and telecommute at 384k -- I'd say that an even meg would be about right -- but do we really need more download bandwidth?