OLPC's XO As a Wireless Hacking Tool

twistedmoney99 writes "InformIT.com has a whimsical yet intriguing look at the OLPC in an article series titled "One Leet Pwning Child — Give one, Get Owned". Part one details how to upgrade the core system with some extras, but part two is where the fun begins as the author converts the OLPC into a lean green hacking machine to enable wireless sniffing, setup the OLPC for vulnerability assessments, and stage the device for a little autopwning with Metasploit."

Comments

what about aircrack?

[RiotingPacifist]

The wireless sniffing section seams a bit weak, if they can Dsniff working, would aircrack-ng not also work?
On an active network, with a bit of patience, aircrack & wireshark can get you all the information you need without leaving a trace, (granted if its a WPA network with a good key its a lot of patience).

Why is this noteworthy?

[eatvegetables]

I'm sure someone will happily correct me if I an wrong here. However, seems to me that just about any wireless enabled linux box + same toolkits = wireless hacking tool. Nothing to see here folks, just move along please ;)

Irony

[stokessd]

So a slightly modded (which is part of the original charter right?) OLPC can own the fleet of upcoming XP based OLPC's?!

Am I the only one who finds that more than a little amusing?

Sheldon

Re: Screw the OLPC

[Alwin Henseler]

First off, parent should (IMHO) be modded as troll, because it has nothing to do with the subject, and looks intended to start a flame war. But just to debunk the argument:

I'd say the OLPC project has succeeded in a technical respect. It produced a computer that's rugged, cheap, power-efficient and flexible. And for the combination of properties, better than what existed before. What's more, if it didn't break open the market of cheap, ultra-mobile machines like the Asus EeePC, then at least accelerated that. Causing millions of people to use smaller, more eco-friendly computing devices than before.

From the education side, success needs more time to show, if it will happen. But progress is blocked here by political or market forces rather than technological options.

So even if the OLPC project hasn't (yet) succeeded in helping poor kids to connect to the rest of the world, and improve their education, it has done 2 things: a) realize part of that dream, and b) bring that goal closer.

-- Oh and btw. it's Nicholas Negroponte

In other words

[eclectro]

Give a kid a fish, he eats for one day.
Teach a kid to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
Give a kid a laptop, and he empties your bank account.
Teach a kid to program, and your job is outsourced to him.

Re:Wasn't it the whole point?

[Alwin Henseler]

Now if only actual kids in 3rd world countries did cool things with these laptops---like coding/hacking/whatever. From this Heise article you can read:

Since mass production of the first generation XO kicked off in November 2007, 600,000 units have been manufactured and distributed to Peru, Uruguay, Mongolia, Haiti, Rwanda, Mexico, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in the USA and Canada. I assume you're thinking most of those 600,000 XO laptops will NOT be used by actual kids to do cool things with?

Eee PC

[AmonEzhno]

I will never understand why even bother with the OLPC...

Why not just use an Eee PC, it's a solid computer, and with the price you end up getting significantly more. Coming from someone who owns an Eee and has used an XO several times; I can tell you that the XO is inferior in so many ways. Not just with little things either, anyone who has tried using that screen in non-ideal conditions knows what I mean.

I'm confused...

[VeNoM0619]

I'm confused... we give them a computer and assume they shouldn't be able to do everything that a computer should, including hacking. Do people seriously see this as a bad thing? If anything, this is good, we gave them a computer that acts like a normal computer, so what about the hacking...