To win this bet I have with Ed I need a WiFi adapter that can do 80211n in the 5GHz band. There aren't a lot of these around and n in 2.4GHz band makes it hard to find adapters with the right support.

I got pair of AC600 generic adapters on ebay for about a tenner, a quick look showed promising Linux support. This indicated I could use one for the bet without too much hassle.

I got a second so I could work on a wireless driver for FreeBSD, what else am I to do with my time?

The adapter is a MediaTek MT7610U device, there is a whole load of information about it on Wikidevi and there are a family of forks of the vendor code on github.

Wikidevi says the MT7610U is similar to the RT28xx series , which are supported by run in FreeBSD. I started last night by taking the run driver, getting it to build as a module, then turning everything off apart from probe, attach and detach.

This is the first time I have tried to port a driver, to help I collated everything I could find written about doing it.

There is straight up FreeBSD stuff:

• http://adrianchadd.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/porting-wifi-driver-from-openbsd-ar9170.html
• https://people.freebsd.org/~jmg/drivers
• https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/arch-handbook/

There are load of little posts where people have ported drivers from FreeBSD to somewhere else:

• https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Porting+Network+Device+Drivers+from+FreeBSD
• http://cnds.eecs.jacobs-university.de/archive/bsc-2011-pvaibhav.pdf
• https://www.dan.me.uk/blog/2010/01/25/ndis-wifi-drivers-in-freebsd-project-evil/
• http://www.netbsd.org/docs/kernel/porting-freebsd-net.html
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32156173/porting-pcie-driver-from-linux-to-freebsd

And there are a load of articles about building wifi drivers for android, these are worth read, but they are worth pointing out:

• http://blog.linuxconsulting.ro/2010/04/porting-wifi-drivers-to-android.html
• https://community.nxp.com/docs/DOC-93603
• https://befinitiv.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/porting-wifibroadcast-to-android/

Reading: Little Brother

I had an argument with some Germans about the pronunciation of WiFi, apparently it is WeeFii using the sounds of wireless and fidelity. They also pronounced HiFi incorrectly, English is a strange language.

Recently StarShipSofa has been delivering podcast files to me that contain 3rd party ads. It is their hosting provider that is inserting the ads, but both times I have been aksed if this my client is to blame.

I am certain PocketCasts would never do this.

Maybe there is something in the file that would indicate who did the encoding?

play (from the sox package)

$ play starshipsofa-454-ads.mp3:

starshipsofa-454-ads.mp3:

File Size: 33.7M     Bit Rate: 64.0k
  Encoding: MPEG audio    
  Channels: 1 @ 16-bit   
Samplerate: 44100Hz      Album: StarShipSofa
Replaygain: off         Artist: StarShipSofa
  Duration: 01:10:10.78  Title: StarShipSofa No 454 Alex Shvartsman and Stephen S. Power

In:0.05% 00:00:02.04 [01:10:08.74] Out:90.1k [  -===|===-  ]        Clip:0

Just the file name and year, lets try ffprobe from the ffmpeg tools:

ffprobe

$ ffprobe starshipsofa-454-ads.mp3:

[mp3 @ 0x809691000] Skipping 0 bytes of junk at 159.
[mp3 @ 0x809691000] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, mp3, from 'starshipsofa-454-ads.mp3':
  Metadata:
    title           : StarShipSofa No 454 Alex Shvartsman and Stephen S. Power
    album           : StarShipSofa
    artist          : StarShipSofa
    date            : 2016
  Duration: 01:10:10.39, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 64 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, mono, s16p, 64 kb/s

Nothing more there, a google says there is something called mp3info:

mp3info

$ mp3info starshipsofa-454-ads.mp3:

starshipsofa-454-ads.mp3 does not have an ID3 1.x tag.

Well that was no good at all.

I don't have a ton of time to find the mp3 metadata might be, none of these tools show anything. I guess that means I can be happy I am not leaking info when I encode an mp3, or I can't find it with normal tools.

Reading: Little Brother

As an aside form talking about the Electron Gnomes on the latest Embedded FM podcast Elecia and Christopher implored us to talk to people about their awesome podcast to everyone we know.

So, go and listen to the Embedded FM Podcast featuring excellent interviews , professional advice and something about Electron Gnomes.

Reading: Little Brother

5th post

WPA IS BROKEN!!!1

Okay it isn't, that attack is awesome, but it is a social one rather than a break of WPA. I bet it would work in a load of environments, I would be surprised if pentesters didn't already have it in their toolkits.

Really the OS should be doing much more to protect users from this class of attacks. WPA written today would not be vulnerable to this class of attack at all.

Reading: The Puzzle Palace, 802.11 Wireless Networks 2nd Edition, Packet Captures

I read this awesome review of hackmud , it made me think of other games about hacking or games that involve actual hacking.

• Hackmud
• Uplink
• HackNet
• Quadrilateral Cowboy
• Else Heart.Break()
• TIS-100

I have only played Uplink and TIS-100, I have heard the others are pretty great. You should play them and tell me how they are.