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Reverse Engineer Finds Kindle's Hidden Features
bensafrickingenius writes "CNET's Crave site has an interesting article on Amazon's Kindle eBook reader, and the extensive reverse-engineering that fans of the device have accomplished. The site specifically points out the work of Igor Skochinsky at the Reversing Everything website. His work on the Kindle's Root Shell has revealed some fascinating goodies: 'Among the ones uncovered and described on his blog are a basic photo viewer, a minesweeper game, and most interesting, location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position. There also are some basic location-based services that call up a Google Maps view to show where you are and nearby gas stations and restaurants.'"
...location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position...
Ok, that's it I'm never buying my "Catcher in the Rye" through Kindle... (Apologies to Mel Gibson).
Shh.
What, no "Don't Panic" screen saver? Who writes these product requirements anyway?
Yertle the Turtle? Granted, my knowledge of Seuss has been waning since the first grade, but I don't remember the good Dr. at any of our underground resistance meetings.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
"Sir, it appears that headkase is holding his underground resistance meetings in the restroom."
Well, I must say that, again, we've seen some delightful programming coming out of the former Soviet Union. They just make great programmers there. Bravo to this guy for reverse engineering the Kindle.
With an impressive servo-mechanism to turn the pages and push them real close to the screen class.
Honestly, why was it even included in the article posting? It's just a pointless summary of the content present in the original blog postings. 'course, I'm sure they appreciate the additional ad revenue...
A root password of "Fiona"? Wasn't that the name of the girl in Neal Stephenson's novel _The Diamond Age_? The one who was educated by the nanotechnological Primer book?
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
All current CDMA chipsets have location capability, due to E911 requirements for cellphones. They go through all sorts of gyrations to get a fix quickly when starting the GPS from cold (can't leave it running all the time or it would kill the battery), and to get a fix in "difficult" environments like urban canyons. They get a rough location by triangulating on cell towers, determine available satellites, doppler and code phase estimates, then tell the GPS what it should be listening for. Instead of taking several minutes from a cold start, they get a fix in a second or two.
When you get a cellphone the service agreement will say that you agree to be located if you call 911 (read it, it's there). Any other location must be initiated by you, or with your permission, due to privacy issues. I did software for dedicated CDMA location devices and users got a special service agreement from Sprint. It said if you buy and use this thing, you are agreeing to be located.
It's pretty slick.
...laura
It's interesting, yes, but not too different from a normal GSM phone. They can triangulate your position with that too to a certain degree, and police have actually used that method to find a dead man whose phone was still on. Then when they got clear they played some other tricks. I think this was in the UK but I cannot dig up the link right now.
Alt-1 show current location in google maps
Alt-2 find gas station nearby
Alt-3 find restaurants nearby
Alt-4 request department of homeland security respond to current location to investigate suspicious brown-skinned person
Alt-5 find custom keyword nearby
Alt-D dump debug info to the log and toggle highlight default item
Alt-Z toggle zone drawing and show log
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Okay, I's like to explain what makes ebook readers so bad and what needs to be done to fix them. Most Slashdotters will recall the days of the internet appliance (remember the i-opener?). What made them so bad is exactly what makes ebook readers so bad: they are only slightly less costly than computers, but are not nearly as useful. The internet appliances were essentially full computers with low specs because they only needed to browse the web. This made them almost as expensive as real computers. Their functionality was limited. They were proprietary and one had to purchase a service plan from a specific vendor. Now we see the same thing happening with ebook readers. They are as complex as computers and are just as expensive. They have limited functionality. They are proprietary. Here is the device I would like to see. A Bluetooth/USB ePaper display. Let a person's smart phone, computer render everything and tell the display what to do. The display wouldn't have to implement all sorts of complex file formats, the external device will take care of it. A display like this could be useful beyond ebooks. You might want one sitting next to your desk or in the server room displaying information. You might attach a keyboard to it with extra battery power and processing power. Maybe a bluetooth keyboard with extra battery power for charging your smart phone and ePaper display, allowing your smart phone to handle all the processing. The main point is that someone needs to produce a simple ePaper display around which others may innovate.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
I think the important thing is that the kindle tracking is a pull, not push system. That is, the kindle unit can triangulate itself, and the firmware has a hidden routine for doing that and then pulling up your location on google maps, but it's not like it's an active tracking signal that anyone can lock onto. For this thing to be used to track someone without their knowledge extra software would have to be installed that constantly relayed to an outside source with the kindles own triangulated position. As a bonus this would likely do bad things to the kindles battery life, so just keep an eye out for sudden drops in battery life following any updates.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
It is probably in the CDMA chipset anyway, since it's required by law to be included in phones. It probably would have cost them a lot more to build the device without the position sensing capability.
you mean this thing's a phone too? (I haven't read much about it)
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The market that can use these devices is any area where manuals must be referenced or should be referenced throughout the day. Think car repair. No way can anyone know everything about any car out there. Build a more sturdy form of these machines (grease/solvent/drop resistant) and let it load books on the fly from a local server. Instead of having to have bulky stations fixed throughout the center, let alone paper manuals or such, they can now follow the worker...
e-books need a business use first, then after people get used to using them at work they will want that functionality at home and that is when the sales will take off.
Besides, ironing out usage issues in a business environment is much better than a consumer market where control isn't available.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It connects to a cellular telephone network to allow download of books and newspapers over the internet wirelessly. I don't think you can use it to make phone calls, but it's got all the chips in it you would need for it to be a phone too.
No phone calls, but it does have a web browser under experimental features... Just tried the shortcut, and google maps is coming up (nice way to get my current location at least), but I'm not getting an actual map. All I get is the google topnav, a little location arrow and my latitude/longitude over the text 'Make this my default location', the map itself just displays 'Loading...'
Likely it's a limitation in the internal browser, something that may get fixed in the future, at which point, I would expect the google maps shortcut to be documented.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
extra software would have to be installed that constantly relayed to an outside source with the kindles own triangulated position.
<hat material="tinfoil">
Constantly, or on request. You connect to the net and some steganographic message in some metadata (say, whitespaces in http headers) tells it to triangulate its position and send it to the requesting party. Such piece of software could be hidden quite deep in network drivers or such.
</hat>
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I was wrong, google maps does work, you just have to turn javascript off... And now that I can actually see the map, it's figuring my location within 6 blocks of where I actually am. Could be because I'm inside, I'll have to test some more outside.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
From what I've seen, there's only one fan of this device, and his name is Jeff Bezos.
Advice: on VPS providers
Whats the name of this guy? Is he always driving in reverse? Walking in reverse? How, what and why would one become a Reverse Engineer?
It's all about reach, it's the same with newspapers they repost things years after it happens, as long as it's news for their readers. But usually blogs are better because you can actually trace where the source is.
Is documented in Berke Breathed's latest comic:
http://www.comics.com/wash/opus/archive/opus-20071230.html
Personally, I wouldn't mind if there was a way to track lost or stolen items - especially if they contained any sort of account information whatsoever.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Um, where does it say it has tracking hardware? The summary implies it has the opposite. (Clue: "Tracking hardware" is something that broadcasts your position to others. This is the opposite of what GPS or other positioning technology does. I fail to see anything in the summary which implies this device has any kind of tracking hardware.)
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Actually they could make this more accurate than GPS but they would have to put expensive atomic clocks into every cell tower. Not going to happen but it could and it would even work inside if you could see three or more cell towers.
What gets me is that this is no worse than your cell phone. If you have a cell phone then it could be tracked by the towers. You really don't need any software on the device.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Seeing as how the Kindle doesn't even have a backlight, it wouldn't help with that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Hey Dick, I'm Detective John Kimble. Now get out of my soundboard!
No, pretty much, when your phone connects to a cell tower, the towers know where you are. If someone wants to track approximately where you are with the Kindle, they can do it (the cell modem they are using draws 3 milliamps when in dormant mode, so watching for drops in battery life won't help much). Now, I don't believe there is an infrastructure set up that records where everyone is at each moment, but you will have to talk to an engineer from one of the carriers to determine that for sure.
Qxe4
Not to worry, you are probably already carrying a "tracking device" in your pocket RIGHT NOW! All recent issue mobile phones have location capabilities by triangulating multiple signals off of towers. In the US it is to help 911 services locate people. In Europe, it helps the bad guys look for Jason Bourne. If you stress about it you may be able to navigate the menus and turn that feature off.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews