-
Challenges of Designing Hardware
A few months ago, I set out to create KiKard, a custom NFC testing board meant for part two of my NFC Card emulation series. It was an ambitious project with some pretty lofty goals, but I felt somewhat confident that I could complete it within a month. Unfortunately, things did not go according to…
-
VMs VS Baremetal in Cybersecurity
Virtual machines (VMs) have been around for a long time. Many people use them daily for various tasks, but let’s focus on VMs for offensive and defensive cybersecurity. Offensive Virtual Machines Pros: Quickly spin up premade images Supports most OS’s Little to no risk of corrupting the host system Cons: May be slow due to…
-
Bluetooth LE Encryption
A few days ago, I stumbled upon BLEUnlock, a project that used BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to unlock Mac devices based on the proximity of a secondary device, like an iPhone or Apple Watch. After roughly looking through the repository, it became apparent that the software lacked encrypted communications to facilitate authentication. Instead, it merely…
-
What Your Browser Gives Away
Ever wonder what information websites get from your browser? At first glance, you might think it’s just basic stuff, like a return address, but it’s much more complicated than it seems. In this article, we’ll go over what sites can see about your device and why they would need this data. Note: You can check…
-
NFC Card Emulation
NFC and RFID are widespread technologies commonly used in services like contactless payments, item scanning, and security keycards. Over the years many technologies using NFC have been reverse engineered or hacked, resulting in tools like the proxmark or flipper zero. NXP, one of the big keycard manufacturers, has had multiple generations of their Mifare security cards…