Read all about his exploits, highs & lows in this New Yorker article:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/07/120507fa_fact_kushner?currentPage=all

Geohot loves electronics, but hates the 9-5 grind, just like us.

You can now use a £20 USB DVB-TV Stick to receive any frequency from 64-1700MHz at a high bandwidth sample rate of 2.8MS/s. Required chipset is RTL2832U & Elonics E4000 tuner combo. Known good units are EzCapTV 668 & 666 units, along with a host of similar boards.

sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr

What has been successfully tested so far is the reception of FM/AM radio, TETRA (police, ambulance, fire), GMR (sat phones), GSM (mobile phones), ADS-B (aircraft data) and POCSAG (pagers).

Go and type RTL-SDR into Youtube and you’ll find loads of great demo videos – like these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0hEquzLsWU

Here’s another good page : http://www.rtlsdr.com/

Buy a compatible USB from eBay here

Once upon a time there were two pay TV systems in the UK, Sky & ONDigital. Sky worked through a dish and ONDigital through your TV aerial.
One day pirate viewing cards for ONDigital appeared, long after Sky had eradicated hacking of their own cards with the launch of the series 10 card from NDS.

ONDigital couldn’t build a real service if they couldn’t raise subscriptions, and they couldn’t raise any money when everyone in the UK was watching all their pay content for free.

Rumblings on the web today alleged that NDS (Israeli company who provide card technology to Sky) may have paid hackers to research the vulnerability of the systems used by ONDigital, and that the research may have found its way outside NDS, again allegedly.

Read the full story from The Guardian here and here.

Watch the BBC Panorama documentary here

Read all about NDS here

The latest Barclaycard includes a contactless RFID type chip, which works in a similar way to an Oyster card (UK London Underground Travel Card). Some of the latest mobiles can read these chips too. It’s now been shown that the card number, expiry date & card holders name can be read just by holding a smartphone against someones wallet. Those details can then be used to order something through Amazon, even though you still don’t have the 3 digit security code.

Full article is here.

Fibre optic network for Smart Meters

Responsible department: Department for Energy and Climate Change

To protect the long term health and security of UK citizens, and particularly the health of our children, we the undersigned demand the Government adopt a wired fibre-optic network for Smart Meters. Consumers should have the option of wired Home Area Networks at no additional cost. Provision must also be made for people with Electro-Sensitivity to keep their analog meters and be supplied with shielding materials where necessary.

Read report at BBC here.

Using a £10 Motorola C115, a USB cable and a laptop running Linux.

For IMSI catchers to achieve their goals they will need to show behavior different from normal base stations. We distinguish between yellow, red, and black flags. Yellow flag are an indication that you might have been caught; red flags are a very strong indication; and black flags tell you: “You are being tracked down; throw away your phone and run.”

Read the CatcherCatcher tutorial.

Links to live video streams

They claim it was brought down by electronic measures. Signal jammer anyone?

BBC story & video

more here

Mobile coverage map and stats

OFCOM Sitefinder locate masts by postcode.