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