Hacker for Hire » Technology

Stupid iPhone and Stupid Tethering

Wyatt — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:21:16 +0000

I was sitting at a coffee shop today I was disappointed I forgot to ask for the wifi key. Now I could totally sit here and crack the WEP key, but that takes precious CPU and battery life and well, I just wasn’t that interested in getting the tools to compile for my Mac. This led me to wax poetic about the days I used to have a tether to my iPhone 3G and I thought … “Man, I would sure like to be able to tether again;” but the last time, that didn’t go over so well. The last time I installed the tethering packages from Cydia, I lost access to voicemail for 2 weeks, couldn’t get them to uninstall, yada-yada-yada, annoying experience. But today, I actually had time to think about how to solve this issue and then it hit me: I’m a moron, I should have seen this last year. Five minutes later, I was on the net.

At the very basic level, tethering is nothing more than providing a way to share your phone’s connection to the internet. I’ve been using a similar tool for years to do the same sort of thing, ssh. So why not just use that again? For all you hackers out there, he’s the quick and dirty in 10 easy steps:

Jail-break your iPhone. I recommend any of the following the procedures here
Install SSH using Cydia
Setup a computer-to-computer network in whatever capacity you like (yea Mac!)
Join your iPhone to the computer-to-computer network
Open up a terminal and ping the broadcast address to find you iPhone (or whatever other method you want to find the IP address of the Iphone)
SSH over to your iPhone and change your password and install a public-private key pair
SSH back over to your iPhone using a command like this `ssh root@ -D8080` to setup a SOCKS proxy tunnel
Setup your web browser to use a SOCKS proxy using any way you like (examples here)
Open your iPhone and go to some web-page to get a 3G data IP address
Start surfing the web on your “tethered” iphone

That’s all there is to it. Now you can “tether” your iPhone, share the connection, whatever you want. Oh, and AT&T can’t actually “tell” you’re tethering without some effort. Now there are obviously more things you can do to make life easier like:

Installing the SSH reconnection tool
Disabling SSH timeouts with
Automatically connecting the Data IP address when you SSH

However, those are left as an exercise to the reader. Don’t you hate it when people do that? I know I do. Friggen jerks.

Code Snippet Stable at 2.1.5

Wyatt — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:05:59 +0000

Alright, I goofed and accidentally updated a stable revision that I thought was being tested correctly and well … it wasn’t. So if you’re having issues with Code Snippet, just roll back to version 2.1.5 and life should be better.

Sorry for the screw up, but this has actually brought to light some bugs I never even knew were there so I’ll have those fixed up soon and we’ll be rolling again.

Download for 2.1.5 is here: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/codesnippet-20.2.1.5.zip

Denyhosts Redux

Wyatt — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:55:32 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve actually had to think about using Denyhosts and if you’ve read my post before, you’ll know I’ll swear by it’s functionality.

Recently, we’ve been getting hit by lots of SSH brute force attacks at HTG … and hit hard. The most recent stat was more than 2400 failed login attempts from over 50 unique attackers in a 24 hour period. Most times, I don’t care as long as they don’t get in … but then I sat back and thought, “Man, those fsckers are probably costing on bandwidth somehow.” and that’s where I draw the line.

So once again, Denyhosts is up and running, more than 60 hosts have been banned just today and more are going to get taken down. Now, if only I could come up with a good legal reason to just give my servers the capability to attack back … but that’s not legal … yet.

Quick & Dirty iPhone Macro Lens

Wyatt — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:26:59 +0000

I don’t know why I thought to do this especially since I think taking pictures on a cell phone is relatively stupid; however, I had the parts laying around and figured, “Why don’t I just see what that looks like?”

Supplies

Disposable Camera: $0.00 (ask your grocery store for an empty one)
iPhone: $0.00 (fell off truck)
iPhone Soft-case (mine is an Incipio and it fell off the same truck)

Instructions

Disassemble the camera and salvage the len(s) without zapping yourself. If you really want, you can zap yourself because some people like that … you freaks.
Put the lens inside the soft-case
Put your iPhone in the soft-case
Take macro pictures at a glorious 2.0 megapixels

Update: After writing this, I actually took the time to see if I was original as I though did a quick search at instructables.com. Turns out, I’m not that creative: Cheap iphone macro lens for barcode scanning

Friends Don’t Let friends Use Dreamweaver

Wyatt — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:47:16 +0000

Really .. they don’t. No one should every be allowed to “generate,” and I use that term so loosely, a website from what they create in Dreamweaver. Two of my friends and I have spent nearly 2 days fixing 5 pages that were “generated” by Dreamweaver. Has any one ever looked at the crap HTML it generates??? It’s absolutely nuts. The cramming of all the style sheets in to anonymous names and stuffed at the top of each HTML is beyond ridiculous. And don’t even get me started on the static layout of all the pages it trys to render by default. I took at page that was “generated” by Dreamweaver and ran it though the W3C Markup Validation Service … 138 errors. And not hard to catch errors … they obvious really stupid errors. Missing tags, improper style declarations, style declarations to absolutely nothing on the page; the list goes on.

So moral of the story … don’t let anyone use Dreamweaver to PRODUCE the live version of a website. Build it in a REAL editor like Notepad, Vim, The Programmer’s Notepad, or TextMate. Hell, build it in Visual Studio’s text editor … just don’t trust some bloated, crappy tool to produce something functional for you.

Quickie: XMBC/Boxee Created in Linux

Wyatt — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:35:34 +0000

Alright, I’m sure this will be documented much more clearly elsewhere and in a hacker-ish manner, but here’s the basic steps to make the atv-bootloader in a Linux environment so you can install Boxee or XBMC. Make sure you install the HFS/HFS+ tools for your Linux distribution.

Open up the shell and roll up your sleeves
Get the latest from svn

wyatt@hax0red:~/ svn co http://atvusb-creator.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/atvusb-creator
Change into the atv-usbcreator directory and launch the creator

wyatt@hax0red:~/atvusb-creator$ sudo ./atvusb-creator.py
Plug in a partitioned USB drive and create the patch stick with Boxee/XBMC/whatever (which will do it wrong, but that’s ok!)
Now, write the real image to the device using dd like a good linux user

wyatt@hax0red:~/atvusb-creator$ dd if=staging/atv_512MB.img of=/dev/sdb
Once that’s done, pop out the USB drive and plug it back in
You should now be prompted to automount 2 partitions on the drive, the second should be empty
Copy everything from payloads into this mounted directory

wyatt@hax0red:~/atvusb-creator$ sudo cp -r payloads/patchstick/* /media/PATCHSTICK/.

Hope it works for you! And if not, give it a few, they’ll have a Windows and Linux version working shortly.

Vim Settings

Wyatt — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:58:47 +0000

This really isn’t for anyone else other than myself. I’m sick and tired of having to look up all the vim commands to put in my .vimrc file every time I build/logon to a new system. Maybe you’ll get some joy out of the comments. Here it is:

” enable syntax highlighting because it’s pretty and useful and it should be on by effing default!!!
syntax on

” show the current cursor position in the bottom right cause i can’t count lines for crap
set ruler

” show incomplete command in the lower right corner for when i forget insane vim commands
set showcmd

” allow backspace to work and not annoy the ever living crap out of me
set backspace=1

” jump to matching [({ thingys. sometimes i like this, sometimes i don’t
set showmatch

” show search matches as you type because i’m generally looking for mis-speeellings
set incsearch

” make the mouse enabled at all times because i like being able to paste crap in
set mouse=a

” makes Vim use the indent of the previous line for a newly created line otherwise i can’t read my own code
set autoindent

” i don’t know what this is, but if it makes my code smarter, i want to use it
set smartindent

” highlight search results so you can actually find what you’re looking for
set hlsearch

” lots of fun stuff for specific files
filetype plugin indent on

” allow the EOL to be backspaced over cause i like getting the previous line too
set backspace=2

How to Make Developers Hate Your Platform

Wyatt — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:51:21 +0000

As a developer, I constantly use API’s and platforms created by others to develop software … just like every other developer in the world.

Well, I got it in my head that I wanted to write an application for the S60 3rd Ed. platform, the same one that runs on my Nokia E61. So first things first, I head over and download the SDK from Symbain, which requires registration, but I’m used to that so I don’t mind. Well, there are two downloads … the SDK files … and then the recommended IDE to build the application in without the SDK files. Which brings me to the first way to make developers hate your platform.

1. Make the IDE not include the SDK files

OK, I get that not everyone wants to use Carbide.c++ to develop their application in … especially since Nokia charges for it. And just so you know, Carbide.c++ is nothing more than Eclipse SDK with Nokia’s extra bells and whistles.

2. Steal open source IDE’s and call them your own

Screw that, I’ll use my copy of Visual Studio and run with it for free and not pay for your more than likely busted-ass Eclipse plug-in. I’m sure that if I really wanted, I could break apart your stupid Carbide.c++ plug-in to not require any registration for all your “features” in your stolen IDE. Whatever, I’ll start downloading the 400mb of SDK from Nokia and while that downloads and I’ll read some more on how to build a Symbian application instead of wasting my time (I like Visual Studio better for Windows style development anyway.)

Now if you’ve never played with a Nokia application, all of the applications have to be signed with a certificate … which is really, REALLY frustrating. You can’t install an application unless it has been signed, which brings about the question, “Why the frick can’t I choose what to install on my phone???” It’s my phone, if I want to melt it into a pile of goo after I write 0-s to the stupid flash module on it, I should be able to do that … especially if I’m a developer.

Well, alright, I’ll go get a certificate so I can test my application on my own phone. There are a ton of places that tell you how to do this. Here, here, or here … but they’ve all been replaced with go to SymbianSigned.com method. Fine, I’ll go here and get a certificate … oh wait, I can’t, I have to register to get a developer certificate. OK, I’ll register … again … CRAP!

Your email has address has been rejected as we do not accept registrations from publicly available email domains (e.g. gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc).

Well, I’m glad I have another domain name in my pocket … not everyone does Symbian, you flippin’ jackasses. Alright, now I’m registered at another site (that I couldn’t use my perfered email address at) so I can get a developer certificate just for my phone. Which brings me to my next way to make developers hate you:

3. Make it so developers can’t test their applications without restrictions

Trying to get a certificate results in a:

Your request has failed. Reason:
-Developer Certificates will be ENABLED for users who have a Publisher ID ONLY
-ONLY if you used a Publisher ID to create a .csr file with the DevCertCreate tool will you be able to use Open Signed Offline to create a Developer Certificate.
-Developer Certificates are currently DISABLED for users without a Publisher ID. Users who DO NOT have a Publisher ID CANNOT request Developer Certificates or use Open Signed Offline.
-If you have recently obtained a Publisher ID and are unable to create a Developer Certificate using Open Signed Offline please request support through the Symbian Signed forum on the Symbian Developer Network.

4. Make the development process painful by requiring developers to send you their applications before usage.

Well that’s just fricken great, I can’t even test my application on MY PHONE THAT I BOUGHT WITH MY MONEY. FINE, where do I get the stupid fricken Publisher ID? Oh wait, that’s $200 per year to get a certificate (A.K.A Publisher ID) so you can take your stupid application, submit it to THEIR test center, so they can charge you $20 for each submission that THEY HAVE TO TEST so that it can be Symbian signed so “normal” users can actually install your application.

F – THAT!

I’m not going to pay $200/year so I can give away an application for free. I’ll go write apps for Windows Mobile or the fricken iPhone or some other platform because of this crap. Screw you Symbian. Screw you.

Rails With Calendar Date Select

Wyatt — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:17:15 +0000

Today, I spent 2-hours trying to figure out the correct way to implement an AJAX based call with the wonderful Calendar Date Select plugin. Now I’m sure it’s totally my fault for being a Rails noob, but I couldn’t come up with squat on Google for how to use this plugin with an server side AJAX call. So here’s my write up on how to do it using remote_function.

According to the documentation, if I want to use an AJAX style call, I should use the onchange attribute, which executes some JavaScript for you. That’s cool, I can do that. But that’s not really that helpful for trying to update the server unless you use the Ajax.Updater() like these guys did. Alrighty, so now I’ve got to figure out my controller URL, build that in and then pass in some parameters to my JavaScript I’m writing inside my Rails code.

WRONG!

The first time I saw that I had to be writing JavaScript, I should have know I was trolling the wrong websites. I started to think and remembered that I used an AJAX call somewhere else in my code to sort a list. No dice. The implements sortable hides everything from me and again wasn’t even close to what I was looking for. More searching and I finally … FINALLY … found some bastion of sanity that said you are supposed to use remote_function to make AJAX based calls. I knew this was exactly what I was looking for when I saw the name and when I read that you don’t have to write JavaScript to make it work … it writes it for you.

Only there was a snag. Calendar Date Select‘s onchange gives you the function $F(this) to retrieve the date. But it’s a JavaScript function, not a Rails function … so you have to some how get the JavaScript variable to be a Rails variable … going the other way is cake:

"/* javascript in rails */ var t = #{@myObject.date};"

So now, I started search for how to make a JavaScript variable part of a Rail’s POST request. It’s the :with parameter. So now my call looks like:

<span class="emphasize">Scheduled for <span id=‘current_show_date’>< %= date_no_time_format(@show.date) %>span>
< %= calendar_date_select_tag "show[date]",
date_no_time_format(@show.date).to_s,
:time => false,
:popup => "force", :hidden => true,
nchange => remote_function(:update => "current_show_date",
:url => {:action => "update_show_date", :id => @show.id},
:with => "’date=’+$F(this)" )
%>
span>

After 2-hours of trying to find this, I find the “F(this)” so true . Well, now another problem … the date is coming across as “Monday, January 1 2009.” Which I’m sure I can do all sorts of fun conversions on inside of the ruby code … but I don’t want to. It’s going in the database as a DateTime, it should be passed as an ISO date. But of course, there is no ISO date formate for Calendar Date Select. Fortunately, you can extend it and someone took the time to write an ISO formate for it … but they left it all busted to hell in the comments section. So I fixed it. Then I fixed all the jslint problems with it so it would actually work in IE. You can download it here, or copy it from here:

Date.prototype.toFormattedString = function(include_time) {
var hour;
var str = this.getFullYear() + "-" + Date.padded2(this.getMonth() + 1) + "-" +Date.padded2(this.getDate());
if (include_time) {
hour = this.getHours();
str += " " + this.getHours() + ":" + this.getPaddedMinutes();
}
return str;
};

Date.parseFormattedString = function (string) {

var regexp = "([0-9]{4})(-([0-9]{2})(-([0-9]{2})" +
"( ([0-9]{1,2}):([0-9]{2})?" +
"?)?)?)?";

Drop in your as [project]/public/javascript/calendar_date_select/format_iso_date.js. Then add the following lines to your environment.rb:

# Custom Date/Time formating for CalendarDateSelect
CalendarDateSelect::FORMATS[:iso_date] = {
# Here’s the code to pass to Date#strftime
:date => "%Y-%m-%d",
:time => " %I:%M %p", # notice the space before time. If you want date and time to be seperated with a space, put the leading space here.
:javascript_include => "format_iso_date"
}
CalendarDateSelect.format = :iso_date

Lesson learned … if the path looks complex, it’s probably not the wrong way … but it’s more than likely not the right way.