Kirt Cathey, NH2GX, JG1FXZ

The fine folks over at passwordrecoverytools.com sent a request for an evaluation about four months ago, and as I was ensconced in a plethora of security work and programming, I never had a chance to test the tool for a good writeup. That was, until I decided to go on vacation last week and a client sent a password protected zip file without forwarding the password!

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This article by Engadget highlights a stealthy use of technology, but the school district, school, or principal – whoever made the original decision to do this – clearly violated personal privacy.

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This cool little electronics device from Sparkfun Electronics allows you to log anything you can connect via a serial connection. A friend of mine handed this to me for Christmas, which is a good surprise that fits quite well with all the logging electronics applications that I have been prototyping lately, including some future ideas that I have for enhanced GPS/APRS/Wx logging, hiker emergency communications, and others. Enjoy! Comment – rants, comments, anything except spam.

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I do not know which one came up with the idea first, but these two web pages- AL7FS Jim Larsen and Pirate Nation Radio – show circuit board designs that fit into an Altoids box. But I also remember an IT Infrastructure Manager at a company that I used to work at that always had [...]

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Over the past year or so, a friend and I have been mulling over a device that can be used in a variety of ways to deter animals from entering certain perimeter areas – such as keeping a dog from doing his business at the front gate of your house. There are other applications as I have learned that apply to keeping wolves off of ranches, or keeping coyotes away from designated areas.

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Since the last series of posts many people have followed up with existing solutions for what I am trying to do, but none are exactly what I am trying to do. First, anything that requires the installation of software to do the actual logging on the target system, or any installation of software to analyze [...]

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Today was the last day of a very productive four-day weekend. Do not know exactly what the motivation to get in a train (I hate trains lately, especially in pandemic Japan) and take a ride into Akihabara, but it was probably because I had to get up early and escort the kids to school. Anyway, [...]

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Okay, now the final section of the first chapter is complete in this experiment to find or create a true hardware key logging device. In the last blog when I referred to this commercial device for sale, I forgot to mention that it is one of the few on the market that does not require driver software or any other software to read the contents. That is the ideal option for stealthy, in-and-out operation.

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After my article yesterday, I have all but setup the breadboard prototype to continue the experimentation. I’ll get to that this afternoon, but already suspect that the prototype design I posted yesterday will NOT work. The main reason I think it will not work is because the USB to serial conversion chip needs to register with the USB host (i.e. the computer) before it will ‘speak’ USB and recognize traffic on the bus and convert that information to serial. We’ll test that this afternoon after I return from Part II of the home office cleanup.

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The reason this kind of pin-to-pin connection works is because the computer (USB host) identifies the device as a PS2 device when it is plugged into the computer, and the computer speaks serial to the device. … What all this means is that if you run a straight wire tap into a USB-to-USB keyboard connection, you are going to get a lot of garbage from other devices running through the same host controller, you are going to have timing problems, and it will be virtually impossible for a PIC, AVR, or any micro controller to keep up with analysis and filtering due to computing limitations. … How about running a straight wire tap from a USB-to-USB connection into an FTDI USB to serial conversion chip that is powered by the USB bus itself and analyzing the serial exchange? … The first thing of concern when reviewing this is whether the USB host (computer) will try to enumerate the FTDI chip and load the driver, which is what we don’t want – so may have to install some diodes or something to make sure the communication on goes one way from keyboard to FTDI chip and out the serial port.

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