Neopwn, the World's First Pentesting Mobile Phone

thefanboy writes "What do you get when you cross BackTrack Linux apps with a mobile phone? This is the first ever publicly available mobile phone running a full custom Linux network auditing distribution, and it runs it surprisingly well. One can literally go from phone to pwn in 2 seconds. Based off of the Openmoko Neo Freerunner, many steps have been taken to compensate for the lack of a QWERTY keyboard with automation scripts, dialogs, and a point-and-pwn menu. It runs applications such as Metasploit and the Aircrack suite quite well, especially given the fact that it supports a wide array of USB WLAN cards."

Comments

I really hate the term 'pwn'

[ttlgDaveh]

'pwn' drives me nuts. In my eyes the use of it seriously undermines any project and gives the impression that it is presided over by annoying 13 years olds which, in turn, pretty much makes me dismiss it.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[couchslug]

"'pwn' drives me nuts. In my eyes the use of it seriously undermines any project and gives the impression that it is presided over by annoying 13 years olds which, in turn, pretty much makes me dismiss it."

Even if it is accompanied by trendy, fresh terms like "Neo" ???

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[m50d]

Try and remember how you were when you were 13. I've noticed a strong tendency for annoying 13 year olds to write damn good code. They're idealistic, trying to prove themselves, and don't have anything better to do; dealing with a little language silliness is a small price to pay.

Seriously, I'd trust code written by 13 year olds a lot more than that written by major companies.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[cbreaker]

"Seriously, I'd trust code written by 13 year olds a lot more than that written by major companies."

Then you'd be stupid.

Sure, a young kid can write some novel little things, but serious software? No. It does in fact take teams of people do to that - in the OSS world or corporate world (or as often is the case, a mix of the two.)

Generally speaking, 13 year old boys don't do much on the Internet except beg for shit, yell at shit, and talk shit. Lots of shit is involved.

It's not limited to 13 year olds, but it sure is true for many 1st person shooter type games. I used to enjoy playing games like CS and stuff with my friend but we both eventually got tired of the little kiddies ruining every game.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, the OP really got pwned.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I'd trust code written by 13 year olds a lot more than that written by major companies.

I don't trust a 13 year old kid to wash my car, let alone do something like write software for me. Wait until they've gone to school and got a bit of experience doing actual work, and then we'll talk.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[thetoadwarrior]

I know. Any company that can't use the proper 0wn3d or cl0wn3d isn't getting my business.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[thetoadwarrior]

Neo is older than new and comes from the Greeks to mean new or young. So maybe you should be using neo rather than that neoterm new.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[Cecil]

I wrote a (shitty) text adventure on the C64 when I was 8 or 9. By I was 13 I was probably hacking away in MOO code and Turbo Pascal. But yeah, I agree, the original post about trusting a 13-year-old's code is a bit ridiculous.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[jabithew]

Neologism, not neoterm. The word you were looking for already conveniently exists.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally speaking, 13 year old boys don't do much on the Internet except beg for shit, yell at shit, and talk shit. Lots of shit is involved.

Ummm, no. You forgot the pr0n. Lots & lots of pr0n.

It's not limited to 13 year olds, but it sure is true for many 1st person shooter type games. I used to enjoy playing games like CS and stuff with my friend but we both eventually got tired of the little kiddies ruining every game.

Probably because you got pwned.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[m50d]

Sure, a young kid can write some novel little things, but serious software? No. It does in fact take teams of people do to that - in the OSS world or corporate world (or as often is the case, a mix of the two.)

No it doesn't. Any piece of software actually large enough to need a team (which is a far far smaller number than the number which are generally written by team) should be separated into smaller components. A single good coder beats a team - of any size - every time; I've lost count of the number of times I've seen a kid write a superior replacement for something that took a major corp. six months in one 36-hour shot.

Generally speaking, 13 year old boys don't do much on the Internet except beg for shit, yell at shit, and talk shit. Lots of shit is involved.

95% of everything is shit. Yes, a lot of 13 year olds are doing shit, but they aren't the ones who are writing and releasing code.

It's not limited to 13 year olds, but it sure is true for many 1st person shooter type games. I used to enjoy playing games like CS and stuff with my friend but we both eventually got tired of the little kiddies ruining every game.

You'd be surprised how many of those "kiddies" are actually in their 20s or worse.

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[Anonymous Coward]

PWNED!!!

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[atraintocry]

Homophone
:P

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[cbreaker]

Well yes, but they weren't use in common English. Not really..

Re:I really hate the term 'pwn'

[centuren]

The word "conservatism" is being used to mean "the principles and practices of political conservatives" in that context. A new variant of principles and practices by political conservatives is quite obviously a legitimate condition and neoconservatism describes it without confusion. "Newstickwiththeold" certainly doesn't make sense, both as a word and as a conceptual breakdown of the term neoconservative.

Re:0 to NSA blacklist in 6.3 seconds

[ColdWetDog]

(I'm looking at you Alaska)

Actually, the IT infrastructure in the State of Alaska is reasonably good. What you are asking for is that Alaska politicians understand the difference between .ak.gov and yahoo.com. Not only that, you're asking for Alaska politicians to not circumvent that difference whenever they feel it's convenient.

Fat Chance. Remember, this is the state that created the Tubes. And that thinks boiled Moose noses are delicacies.

Place your bets

[cmacb]

Will the reaction to such devices be to strengthen the security of our cellular networks, or to simply outlaw such devices?

Hmmmm, ponder, ponder, ponder.

My money is on the latter.

The ultimate geek toy

[David Gerard]

The anti-iPhone: the Linux telephone that operates entirely from the command line! The Ultimate One-Dimensional Desktop! What can't you do with a bash prompt?

(The v2 version will, of course, run Emacs and be programmed entirely in eLisp written on the fly.)

Re:GPL Violations

[schon]

on their site the cheapest option is $80... with a SD card and dvd thrown in but again no source code download available...

It didn't occur to you that the source code of the GPl'ed components could be on the DVD or SD card?

What on earth makes you think that they have to provide downloads of their software?

It depends who you give it to

[EmbeddedJanitor]

It's OK for "Serious" people with the maturity to not abuse any holes they find. But putting a point-and-click level device in the hands of irresponsible people is in itself irresponsible.

No monitor mode

[oddeirik]

or packet injection with the built-in wifi module:

"Note that the current firmware limitations of the internal wireless does not allow for monitor mode nor packet injection. An external USB WLAN is required for this type of operation."

I like how an external adapter can be an option, but as of now it's a requirement. This sort of ruins the image of this being "a powerful discreet network auditing tool for the penetration tester", atleast for me.
(They do mention that it's the current firmware limiting this, but there's nothing about if and when they'll "fix" this)

Seriously, though...

[Simon Brooke]

This looks like the quickest way to get open source phones banned off every network that you can imagine. So it looks like a big fat juicy own goal, to me.

umm what

[poot_rootbeer]

Neopwn ... Pentesting ... BackTrack ... pwn ... Openmoko Neo Freerunner ... Metasploit ... Aircrack

Can anyone point me in the direction of an article-to-English dictionary?