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OLPC's XO As a Wireless Hacking Tool

Posted by timothy on from the well-equipped dept.

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."

2 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. lovely... by pasv · · Score: 5, Funny

    Great. Now we'll have to worry about those leet African hackers doing phishing.. Oh wait.

  2. Re: Screw the OLPC by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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