The inside of classic radios holds wonders that the sterile chips and SMD components of today’s circuits can’t hold a candle to. Chunky resistors and capacitors, vacuum tubes with cathodes aglow, and seemingly free-form loops of wire forming inductors will all likely make an appearance. But the most fascinating bit of any old radio was connected to the tuning knob: the big variable capacitor with its interdigitating metal plates. Watching one at work, with its plates evenly and finely spaced, is still a joy to behold.

In an attempt to recapture a little of that magic, [Jeremy S. Cook] came …read more

Coming off a long string of losses, Ericsson probably hoped to turn in some good news, but at its latest financial results, the company announced the sacking of 50 people in response to a corruption scandal.

This is in relation to an ongoing US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe that began in 2013, and is, according to reports, to do with allegations of bribery in the company's Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions.

During the Q3 2018 earnings presentation, CEO Börje Ekholm said the 50 people dismissed have also been reported to authorities and foreshadowed

Updated Network box maker F5 has shipped some firewall gear that is potentially vulnerable to the libssh authentication-bypass bug.

That means anyone who can reach the at-risk systems over the network or internet can, depending on the configuration, tunnel through to backend infrastructure simply by asking nicely.

The vulnerability , in general, allows an attacker to trick a server into letting her gain access without any valid credentials. When the server expects a SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_REQUEST message, the hacker sends SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_SUCCESS , the server swallows that, and it lets the miscreant log in, with no further questions asked.

There was much guffawing

Sometimes you need to hack on the go. [Supertechguy] has put together an interesting system for hacking on the hoof called the Pineapple Pi. This combines a Raspberry Pi 3 with a seven-inch touchscreen and a Hak 5 WiFi Pineapple into a handy portable package that puts all of the latest WiFi and ethernet hacking tools to hand. The package also includes a 20,100 mAh battery, so you won’t even need a wall socket to do some testing. It’s a bit of a rough build — it is held together with velcro, for instance — but it’s a good place …read more

Back in the early days of Arduino proliferation (and before you ask, yes we realize there was a time before that too), wireless was a strange and foreign beast. IR communication was definitely a thing. And if you had the funds there was this cool technology called ZigBee that was available, often in funny blue house-shaped XBee boards. With even more funds and a stomach for AT commands you could even bolt on a 2G cell radio for unlimited range. WiFi existed too, but connecting it to a hobbyist ecosystem of boards was a little hairier (though maybe not for …read more