259: Calculators Changed My Life

Brandon Wilson (@brandonlwilson) shared his stories about hacking TI calculators (and other things).

TICalc.org has the latest on getting started yourself including Z80 assemblers, or start on Brandon’s website: brandonw.net

Bradon will be speaking at Hardwear.io, a security conference for the hardware and security community. The conference consists of training (11th - 12th Sept 2018) and conference (13th - 14th Sept 2018). It is in The Hague, Netherlands. His talk is The Race to Secure Texas Instruments Graphing Calculators. He will also be hosting a village called Dumping the ROM of the Most Secure Sega Genesis Game Ever Created.

Topics:

00:00:00    Introduction     00:00:33    Brandon Wilson     00:01:39    Lightning Round     00:02:37    Calculators!     00:03:58    Programmable calculators, using TI BASIC     00:05:00    Ti-85, programmable via assembly language     00:06:35    App store for my calculator?     00:07:34    How does TI prevent cheating?     00:09:41    Testguard for teachers     00:12:53    Some are WiFi capable     00:13:41    How Brandon learned to hack the TI 00:15:12    Processors used in the TI calcs 00:16:39    What tools are available for reverse engineering? 00:17:42    Breaking the keys     00:18:49    Flash unlock protection     00:20:14    TI hacker  community     00:21:32    TI used 512-bit RSA keys      00:22:32    Key broken after 2 months of brute force 00:22:58    TI threatened the first key breaker     00:23:31    Built a distributed community to attack keys 00:24:38    TI was not happy      00:25:03    DMCA takedown notice 00:27:28    EFF offered to help      00:29:30    The ethics of circumventing TIs protection     00:33:23    Calculators as a platform for learning HW/FW     00:35:11    Hackers' responsibility toward the hacked     00:39:05    Hacks Brandon is uncomfortable with     00:42:55    Bug bounties, are they effective?     00:44:02    Brandon's other projects      00:44:26    TI calculator processors used all over     00:44:50    Sega Genesis 00:47:54    Code execution via the Sega Genesis CD     00:53:35    Calculators changed my life (back up)     00:54:21    Other projects, USB      00:55:31    Abuse the USB protocol     00:58:24    Modifying USB flash drive FW     01:03:21    Reverse engineering tools     01:06:13    Hardwear.io conference, Brandon's hacking village     01:09:22    Brandon's Final Thought     01:10:19    Outro     01:11:20    Final Quote