[HN Gopher] I created an open-source Hardware Hacking Wiki - wit...
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I created an open-source Hardware Hacking Wiki - with tutorials for
beginners
Author : hw-f3nter
Score : 280 points
Date : 2025-01-12 11:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hardbreak.wiki)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hardbreak.wiki)
| polalavik wrote:
| This is rad! I'll throw this in my embedded resources round up
| [1]
|
| https://hardwareteams.com/docs/embedded/embedded-resources/
| findyourexit wrote:
| Whoa! Very much appreciated!
|
| Fantastic round-up with loads of useful inclusions. Thanks for
| sharing!
| spidersouris wrote:
| Thanks for the wiki -- I have always been interested in hardware
| hacking but I have always felt overwhelmed as I didn't know where
| to start. I believe this kind of resource can greatly help with
| that, especially the case studies.
|
| However, I can't help but feel that a major part of the content
| is LLM-generated, or at least LLM-rewritten. It feels off and
| uninteresting to read, honestly. Is it the case? To support my
| case, I see that the case study page
| (https://www.hardbreak.wiki/introduction/case-study-led-to-a-...)
| has very similar paragraphs next to each other, the second one
| seemingly being the "genuine" one, and the first one being the
| LLM-rewritten version.
|
| I'm not against using LLMs to help fix typos or reformulate
| things, but you should definitely keep some of your style. The
| LLM that you used (if you used one) made the content super bland,
| and as a reader, I'm not really incentivized to browse more.
| raywu wrote:
| Case in point, under Case Study > Reconnaissance > OSINT, these
| two paragraphs follow one another - same content but different
| wording.
|
| > The first step in any hardware hacking project is research. I
| started by Googling the router model number, "ASUS RT-N12 D1",
| and came across an article about a similar model, the ASUS
| RT-N12+ B1. The article mentioned that the device had an open
| UART interface allowing unauthenticated root access. However,
| it provided no exact details on how to exploit this or where
| the UART interface might be located. Could my router model have
| the same vulnerability?
|
| > In the first step I googled the model number for my router
| "ASUS RT N12 D1" and I came accross this article. It shows that
| a similar model the "ASUS RT N12+ B1" appears to have an open
| UART interface, which gives unauthenticated root access. It
| does not show how to exacltly abuse this or any details where
| to find the UART interface. Let's see if our router model may
| have the same vulnerability!
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Get a ham radio technician license, and you may develop an
| intuitive perspective on most electrical engineering concepts.
|
| i.e. the physics lab derivation of the core EE tool set is
| unnecessary if you understand what the models are describing.
|
| AI is slop in and slop out... and dangerous to students... =3
|
| John Shive's Wave Machines is where every student should start:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DovunOxlY1k
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _dangerous to students_
|
| It's fatally dangerous to students who ignore it or dismiss
| it out of hand. That much is already certain.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| How so?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Wait and see. You're not paying attention now, but it's
| not too late to start.
|
| Go to your favorite programming puzzle site and see how
| you do against the latest models, for instance. If you
| can beat o1-pro regularly, for instance, then you're
| right, you have nothing to worry about and can safely
| disregard it. Same proposition that was offered to John
| Henry.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Please reformulate your argument, and I will check back
| tomorrow:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNSHZG9blQQ
|
| LLMs are rules based search engines with higher dimension
| vector spaces encoding related topics. There is nothing
| intelligent about these algorithms, except the trick ones
| play on oneself interpreting well structured nonsense.
|
| It is stunting kids development, as students often lack
| the ability to intuitively reason when they are being
| misled. "How many R's in 'Strawberry'?" is a classic
| example exposing the underlying pattern recognition
| failures. =3
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| (Shrug) If you're retired or independently wealthy, you
| can afford that attitude. Hopefully one of those
| describes you.
|
| Otherwise, you're going to spend the rest of your career
| saying things like, "Well, OK, so the _last_ model couldn
| 't count the number of Rs in 'Strawberry' and the new one
| can, but..."
|
| Personally, I dislike being wrong. So I don't base
| arguments on points that have a built-in expiration date,
| or that are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of
| whatever I'm talking about.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Every model is deprecated in time if evidenced Science is
| done well, and hopefully replaced by something more
| accurate in time. There is no absolute right/correctness
| unless you are a naive child under 25 cheating on
| structured homework.
|
| The point was there is nothing intelligent (or AI) about
| LLMs except the person fooling themselves.
|
| In general, most template libraries already implement the
| best possible algorithms from the 1960s, and tuned for
| architecture specific optimizations. Knowing when each
| finite option is appropriate takes a bit of
| understanding/study, but does give results far quicker
| than fitting a statistically salient nonsense answer.
| Several study datum from senior developers is already
| available, and it proves LLMs provide zero benefit to
| people that know what they are doing.
|
| Note, I am driven by having fun, rather than some bizarre
| irrational competitiveness. Prove your position, or I
| will assume you are just a silly person or chat bot. =3
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Get a ham radio technician license, and you may develop an
| intuitive perspective on most electrical engineering
| concepts._
|
| May. I managed to get one without developing much intuition
| for most EE concepts, unfortunately.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Did you mean you don't understand the equations/theory, or
| are having difficulty applying the concepts to design
| circuits?
|
| In the first case, install LTSpice (free from Analog
| Devices), and head here to run down the basics:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@FesZElectronics/videos
|
| And in the latter, go though common basic designs analyzing
| how they work:
|
| https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofelectroniccircuit
| s...
|
| https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofel02graf
|
| https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780070110779
|
| https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofel0006graf
|
| Then try your own designs combining properties of several
| designs. Start with simple blinkers and buzzers at first...
| Try to avoid Arduino designs until you've done a few 555,
| transistor, and opamp circuits first. =3
| akwagiobe wrote:
| Pos
| Aetheridon wrote:
| fantastic providing such knowledge for free, many thanks
| abetusk wrote:
| Unfortunately not Open Source, in the common definition of the
| word.
|
| From the license.md [0] page, under "Terms":
|
| > Exemptions: Commercial Use: For inquiries regarding commercial
| use, please contact the author.
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/f3nter/HardBreak/blob/fd3d2d4cd17624a3f62...
| hw-f3nter wrote:
| I just don't want anyone to copy the content and sell it. It's
| meant to be freely accessible to everyone.
| nerdile wrote:
| That's fine. It's just not open source. Don't call it open
| source if it's not.
|
| Definition: https://opensource.org/osd
| SomeoneOnTheWeb wrote:
| Not everyone agrees with this definition. If the source is
| open to read, for me it's open source. The website you
| linked is an _opinionated_ view on what open source is.
| __jonas wrote:
| > If the source is open to read, for me it's open source
|
| Not everyone agrees with the OSI definition but I'd say
| almost noone agrees with that definition there.
|
| I think most people understand what you are describing as
| "Source Available". Could even be a commercial project.
| shevis wrote:
| > If the source is open to read, for me it's open source.
|
| That's called "source available". Open source
| colloquially implies open license.
| rvense wrote:
| I mean, there's not a lot we can do to stop you using the
| phrase in this way. But you should know that you will
| cause confusion. The phrase "open source" is, to an awful
| lot of people, a technical term with a specific meaning
| and has been so for decades now.
| byteknight wrote:
| Don't be such a stickler. I can hear you yelling from the
| mountains about GNU already.
| Llamanator3830 wrote:
| This reminds me of the discussion of whether if open source
| AI models are open source or not, when the training data is
| not available to the public.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >Free and open-source software (FOSS) or free/libre and
| open-source software (FLOSS) is openly shared source code
| that is licensed without any restrictions on usage,
| modification, or distribution. Confusion persists about
| this definition because the "free", also known as "libre",
| refers to the freedom of the product, not the price,
| expense, cost, or charge. For example, "being free to
| speak" is not the same as "free beer".
|
| I generally think of open source as where I can see the
| code and freely modify it, not necessarily freely
| commercialize it on my own.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| the FSF/OSI are big on emphasizing that "free/open" means
| more than exposing the designs and mechanisms; it means
| guaranteeing certain freedoms and rights to the users of
| your software.
|
| what you're describing is usually called "source-
| available".
| thatcat wrote:
| If open source doesn't specify a license that is it under
| then you should only assume that the source has been made
| available. Both GPL and Apache licensing are considered
| open source, even though apache is more permissive for
| commercial derivatives. No one calls GPL "source-
| available" in common conversation regardless of OSI's
| opinion.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| As well as some variants of BSD licenses:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses
|
| >Two variants of the license, the New BSD
| License/Modified BSD License (3-clause), and the
| Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License (2-clause) have
| been verified as GPL-compatible free software licenses by
| the Free Software Foundation, and have been vetted as
| open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative. The
| original, 4-clause BSD license has not been accepted as
| an open source license and, although the original is
| considered to be a free software license by the FSF, the
| FSF does not consider it to be compatible with the GPL
| due to the advertising clause.
| 38 wrote:
| that definition is wrong, really by just common sense
| fsflover wrote:
| This is a shallow dismissal, which is against the HN
| Guidlines.
| megous wrote:
| I mean this lists MIT license as opensource license, when
| it's clearly not, because it doesn't at all mention source
| code. The license just talks about "software".
|
| Anyone is free to publish only binaries+docs under this
| license, if they wish.
|
| So the website is not very accurate.
| ajot wrote:
| Have you thought of a Creative Commons license? You can have
| a Non-Commercial clause, while letting others to cooperate
| with you and remix the information in your site. CC licenses
| are IMHO better suited for documents than things like GPL,
| BSD or MIT.
|
| https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/
| 38 wrote:
| wrong. your definition essentially means "business friendly",
| the wiki is open source in every way that matters, except for
| "lets make money off this persons free work"
| SilentM68 wrote:
| Thank you for the site.
|
| I've been trying to learn how to customize Linux (e.g. roll my
| own Linux) for any platform but it takes time to learn since all
| the information is laid out all over the internet, thus hard to
| locate. I'm aware of Linux From Scratch project but it is a long
| read and I find that certain knowledge is assumed (e.g. why build
| chain is needed), thus not necessarily newbie-friendly. Though
| I've yet to go through your site, hopefully it will take the
| newbie inexperience (e.g. electronics knowledge if any) into
| consideration.
|
| Good luck, SM68
| whalesalad wrote:
| Can anyone recommend a resource for how to (architecturally)
| handle communication with a device over i2c? That is where I am
| kinda stuck atm when it comes to programming a GPS device.
|
| Backstory: at one point I was trying to use elixir/nerves on an
| rpi to manipulate a few sensor modules to try and produce a race
| lap timer for motorcycles:
| https://github.com/whalesalad/rabbit/blob/master/lib/rabbit/...
|
| I bit off more than I could chew: learn elixir, learn i2c, and
| produce a novel library for controlling the ublox chip since
| nothing existed for Elixir.
|
| But when it comes to managing the state of the device,
| reading/writing memory, etc.. that is all very foreign to me (I
| am used to sockets, http apis, etc) like request/response style
| interactions.
| wmat wrote:
| You might find some useful information on elinux.org here:
| https://elinux.org/Interfacing_with_I2C_Devices
|
| Additionally, search on the wiki of i2c.
| atentaten wrote:
| This is good. I would've like to see the things that are possible
| by hacking hardware upfront. I think this help entice users by
| providing some exciting anticipation.
| freedomben wrote:
| This is great, and sorely needed! My son wanted to get into
| hardware hacking a couple of years ago and had a horrible time.
| He ended up watching a mish-mash of varying quality youtube
| videos and reading blog posts which went out of date suprisingly
| quick.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| whether partially open source or not, I appreciate this. Thanks,
| OP
| rubslopes wrote:
| Please remember to write "Show HN:" when submitting your own
| content.
| hw-f3nter wrote:
| I was thinking about it, but the Guidelines include this:
|
| >Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and
| other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be
| Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.
|
| so I made a regular submission, as I think HardBreak is reading
| material. @Mods feel free to move my post, if this is
| considered a Show HN post.
| david_shaw wrote:
| This is great.
|
| I've always been on the application security side of things, but
| I'm increasingly interested in hardware hacking. Through some
| cursory research, I learned that there are a few scattered
| resources, but the best way to learn is to really work with
| someone who knows what they're doing.
|
| Putting all these guides, roadmaps, etc. together in a single
| place is a great resource that I'll definitely use.
|
| Thank you!
| hi_hi wrote:
| This is great timing. I recently purchased a micro:bit for
| learning with my young daughter (who loves it) and found I was
| very quickly out of my depth with even the most rudimentary
| customisation for the board.
|
| My draws have now exploded with breadboards, alligator clips,
| jump wires, LCDs and various other electrical components and I'm
| in desperate need of understanding the fundamentals of how all
| these things work.
|
| There's something magical and addictive about being able to
| control your own hardware components from your own code though.
| We've had great joy from simply lighting up LEDs and programming
| our IR receiver.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Nice! Hopefully it will grow to include circuit bending [1]
| techniques, those typically used for altering music machines and
| similar.
|
| [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_bending
| amatecha wrote:
| A minor nitpick, but it would be great if you put a description
| of the site in the meta/og description[0] so people get an
| explanation of what the site is when linking elsewhere, e.g. the
| same "This page is a free and open-source wiki about hardware
| hacking!" as is on the page itself. I just linked the site in
| Slack and it just says "hardbreak.wiki / Welcome to HardBreak |
| Hardbreak" which is pretty terse. I imagine there might be some
| setting in your wiki software that might populate these tags
| automatically (moreso than they already have), with any luck!
|
| [0] https://ogp.me/
| hw-f3nter wrote:
| You are right! I encountered the same problem. Unfortunately, I
| didn't find a setting in Gitbook to change the preview text,
| just the preview image. It seems like it just takes the name of
| the first page 'Welcome to HardBreak' and adds the site name
| 'HardBreak' at the end. So I'd have to change the name of the
| first page, but a name like 'HardBreak - a Hardware Hacking
| Wiki' or something similar would look weird on the website, I
| think. I haven't found a good solution for that yet.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Great idea, and it's definitely an area I am becoming more
| interested in as a hobbyist.
|
| Not to be that guy, but I always think it's a shame to see an
| open source community centre itself around a Discord server.
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