Development support hardware

[geekmaster]

[geekmaster]

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Pole dancer, eh?

Never mastered the pole for two reasons. One no pole where I worked and two I would have broke something minor like myself.
I was good on tables.

[geekmaster]

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Never mastered the pole for two reasons. One no pole where I worked and two I would have broke something minor like myself.
I was good on tables.

If table dancing while a minor, then probably no lap dancing, eh?

[geekmaster]

[geekmaster]

[geekmaster]

"Face it. A background with lots of books on a bunch of shelves looks intellectual. A background with lots of Kindles on a bunch of shelves just looks nerdy."
-- Ken Sheldon

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

If table dancing while a minor, then probably no lap dancing, eh?

Oops let me rephrase: minor as in me not major as in the pole or the building.

I stuck to belly dancing and country dancing fully clothed as a minor.

Now 25 years later, there isn't enough money in the world to get me back on a stage.

I was 20 when I started that job and almost 25 when I quit.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Oops let me rephrase: minor as in me not major as in the pole or the building.

I stuck to belly dancing and country dancing fully clothed as a minor.

Now 25 years later, there isn't enough money in the world to get me back on a stage.

I was 20 when I started that job and almost 25 when I quit.

Belly dancing? Could you ever do this?

[Branch Delay]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

I am in my 60's (which until recently I thought of as "approaching middle age") and I do not collect disability even though I have been eligible for it for decades. I have always been proud of my ability to support myself. Though these days daily life is a challenge, and little hope of keeping any sort of "normal job" for long. Though I can certainly accomplish great things, but in my own time as my health allows, not on somebody else's schedule. I really should dedicate my waking hours to ignoring medical advice and rebuilding my body and mind despite the roadblocks the doctors place in my way... But then when would I have time for studying "heap spraying" and ASLR (address space layout randomization) defeats, which are increasingly more necessary for recent kindle jailbreaks (making me think that lab126 finally hired and aspie to fix their firmware security holes), eh?

ASLR bypass/heap spraying is part of the exploitation process. Exploitation is relatively easy in the case of the kindle (for now) -- the difficulty lies in finding unique & exploitable crashes. Ideally we need fuzzers targeting neglected subsystems that can be triggered by a user. The Kindle being written mostly in Java makes that difficult for me as I have no desire to reverse engineer obfuscated Java for free, but that's a promising target. A good place to start would be by diffing 5.6.5 and the latest firmware version.

If you look at the history of various Kindle jailbreaks, you'll note they start off relatively simple and are getting a bit more complicated. There's still value in looking through the regular OS dumps for simple mistakes that can be abused, but we're approaching a state where the Kindle is slightly more secure than it used to be.

Anyone is free to private message me if you need help with any of the aspects, i.e. fuzzing, reverse engineering, exploitation, debugging, etc. Always happy to teach.

Working on a write-up for the 5.6.5 jailbreak, probably will publish that sometime next week. I'll start looking at the new firmware sometime after that.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Belly dancing? Could you ever do this?

Wow just wow.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by Branch Delay

ASLR bypass/heap spraying is part of the exploitation process. Exploitation is relatively easy in the case of the kindle (for now) -- the difficulty lies in finding unique & exploitable crashes. Ideally we need fuzzers targeting neglected subsystems that can be triggered by a user. The Kindle being written mostly in Java makes that difficult for me as I have no desire to reverse engineer obfuscated Java for free, but that's a promising target. A good place to start would be by diffing 5.6.5 and the latest firmware version.

If you look at the history of various Kindle jailbreaks, you'll note they start off relatively simple and are getting a bit more complicated. There's still value in looking through the regular OS dumps for simple mistakes that can be abused, but we're approaching a state where the Kindle is slightly more secure than it used to be.

Anyone is free to private message me if you need help with any of the aspects, i.e. fuzzing, reverse engineering, exploitation, debugging, etc. Always happy to teach.

Working on a write-up for the 5.6.5 jailbreak, probably will publish that sometime next week. I'll start looking at the new firmware sometime after that.

Thanks. I need a modern crash course. I was once considered will versed in this stuff (decades ago). I had KALI linux running on my Raspbery Pi. AFAIK the best place to start would be studying the metasploit attacks for known linux flaws, and going deeper from there. My attention has stayed away from hacking since the Patriot act (and DMCA) put teeth in the laws (but worse, in the minds of the public). I do not wish to follow in the footsteps of Aaron Swartz.

Likewise, I never became a fan of managed or interpreted languages like Java -- my closest attempt was bending ash scripts on the kindles to do eink "animation" using only built-in tools. I prefer avoiding sandboxed environments, prefering crafting on the bare bedrock of the CPU and its I/O peripherals -- even working at system call level gets you in battles with ABI inconsistencies even within the kindle series (as seen recently in my K1 toolchain "fun").

So where I am really happy is playing in custom bootloader code (like the custom u-boots that set the idme bootmode variable, as used in my "Select Boot" thread, and later in the Kubrick wrapper around my debricking methods). And thumbs up to kubrick to wrap my "dangerous" methods in a soft user friendly bootable automated environment. But even kubrick needs a fresh maintenance release with new firmwares (easily "borrowed" from new firmware downloads). With ixtab too busy to hang out here these days, perhaps I should add that to me "to do" list.

But really, getting a variant of your "more sophsticated" jailbreak that works on the latest firmware going would be a useful educational experience for me, but not a way to get my growing debts (painful after so many years of NO debts) under control. I need income -- perhaps I need to setup a patreon account and hope I can get enough to live on (as liitle as $1K/month would be "mostly" enough). And I would certainly allow my sponsors to have a great say in which projects I should work on next.

Though really, jailbreak methods are fascinating to me at this time, but a source of income that does not require me to follow somebody else's daily schedule is even more important. Sorry for the rambling, but my growing debts are getting scary, and where I spend my time in the near future must adapt to stemming that cancerous financial negative growth. (Yeah, I mentioned cancer didn't I -- oops -- time to decide what to do with the REST of my life, in a personally rewarding and FINANCIALLY productive way -- and yes, time to take money seriously for once in my life, and stop making OTHER people filthy rich at my expense)...

EDIT: Though my doctors assure me that despite my health concerns, my plans to live another 60 years are viable if I really DO have the required level of self-control (extremely rare in America), but my friends tell me to "get real" and make every moment count. Apparently, I can no longer trust my muse to guide my way, eh? So really, what should I do with the rest of my life (in a way that is finacially sound)? Kindle hacking is on the list, obviously (but where is a "living wage" in that?), and so is Virtual Reality development (especially great experiences on meager hardware, which MIGHT be able to produce a useful income), plus a gazillion other interests... Though at the moment porting selected portions of the Metasploit Framework to the kindle has crossed my mind.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by knc1

The serial cable and the connector pairs have shipped.
Digi-Key is a bit higher priced than other major electronics distributors, but ship fast?
The do fast real good (I placed my order 6 hours ago.)
No word from Amazon (yet).

= = = =

Now, back to our off-topic chatter while waiting for things to arrive.

USPS has gotten their tracking system back on-line.
Both are due here Monday.

[Branch Delay]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Thanks. I need a modern crash course. I was once considered will versed in this stuff (decades ago). I had KALI linux running on my Raspbery Pi. AFAIK the best place to start would be studying the metasploit attacks for known linux flaws, and going deeper from there. My attention has stayed away from hacking since the Patriot act (and DMCA) put teeth in the laws (but worse, in the minds of the public). I do not wish to follow in the footsteps of Aaron Swartz.

Likewise, I never became a fan of managed or interpreted languages like Java -- my closest attempt was bending ash scripts on the kindles to do eink "animation" using only built-in tools. I prefer avoiding sandboxed environments, prefering crafting on the bare bedrock of the CPU and its I/O peripherals -- even working at system call level gets you in battles with ABI inconsistencies even within the kindle series (as seen recently in my K1 toolchain "fun".

So where I am really happy is playing in custom bootloader code (like the custom usboots that set the idme bootmode variable, as used in my "Select Boot" thread, and later in the Kubrick wrapper around my debricking methods). And thumbs up to kubrick to wrap my "dangerous" methods in a soft user friendly bootable automated environment. But even kubrick needs a fresh maintenance release with new firmwares (easily "borrowed" from new firmware downloads). With ixtab too busy to hang out here these days, perhaps I should add that to me "to do" list.

But really, getting a variant of your "more sophsticated" jailbreak that works on the latest firmware going would be a useful educational experience for me, but not a way to get my growing debts (painful after so many years of NO debts) under control. I need income -- perhaps I need to setup a patreon account and hope I can get enough to live on (as liitle as $1K/month would be "mostly" enough). And I would certainly allow my sponsors to have a great say in which projects I should work on next.

Though really, jailbreak methods are fascinating to me at this time, but a source of income that does not require me to follow somebody else's daily schedule is even more important. Sorry for the rambling, but my growing debts are getting scary, and where I spend my time in the near future must adapt to stemming that cancerous financial negative growth. (Yeah, I mentioned cancer didn't I -- oops -- time to decide what to do with the REST of my life, in a personally rewarding and FINANCIALLY productive way -- and yes, time to take money seriously for once in my life, and stop making OTHER people filthy rich at my expense)...

EDIT: Though my doctors assure me that despite my health concerns, my plans to live another 60 years are viable if I really DO have the required level of self-control (extremely rare in America), but my friends tell me to "get real" and make every moment count. Apparently, I can no longer trust my muse to guide my way, eh? So really, what should I do with the rest of my life (in a way that is finacially sound)? Kindle hacking is on the list, obviously (but where is a "living wage" in that?), and so is Virtual Reality development (especially great experiences on meager hardware, which MIGHT be able to produce a useful income), plus a gazillion other interests... Though at the moment porting selected portions of the Metasploit Framework to the kindle has crossed my mind.

It's almost certainly going to be impossible to port the 5.6.5 jailbreak to 5.7.4.1 or whatever we're currently on -- they've closed nearly all of the bugs/techniques that make it work. Need to look somewhere new. The browser is probably still the easiest system to crash right now, but the current changes will make it more difficult. I'll be looking elsewhere.

Patreon might work but I think getting to $1000 from the mobileread community might be extremely difficult. Also may be legal ramifications for taking money for some of this stuff. I'd personally avoid that.