Sunday, November 23, 2014

Hidden War Dialer Build: Rechristening 2.0

WHAT YEAR IS IT!? Is this a Palm Pilot?
MY LIFE IS A LIE! Nevermind. Raspberry Pi you say?
Tell me more.
Duties in life and work took me away from this project. The end of the year leaves me with some much needed time off. I choose to use some of that time to rededicate myself to this blog and some of its projects. My hope is to present some of these projects at Bsides conferences in 2015.

First, we should talk about the elephant in the room: originally the build was a war dialer hidden inside an APC UPS using an old Sony CliƩ. That project hit some significant roadblocks.
  • Testing the modem
    • Finding an analog phone line bordered on hilariously difficult. In my circle of friends and places I work these things simply do no exist. You would have thought I was looking for a Pony Express stable that could get an urgent package to the "udder sidea the call-r-ada river." 
    • I finally got access to an analog line, but it had its own complications. It was located at an office I did not have access to at the odd intervals I may have time to test. It also did not have a handset nearby to test if the line was actually working.
  • Using the modem
    • The war dialing software was almost a decade old on a platform that is no longer supported using a fork of the PalmOS software and a modem that was not specified in the manual for the war dialer. It was a problem, wrapped in a riddle, where the people that wrote the riddle have all moved on with their lives because the tools are ancient and the idea perfectly insane. Reaching a solution may require a Delorean inside a Tardis.
This is not to say I gave up. I have moved on for now. The project was rechristened: Hidden War Dialer Raspberry Pen Test Build.

Effort will be focused on something a bit more worthwhile: hiding a Raspberry Pi Model B in an APC UPS with a cellular modem and an Ethernet passive tap. The work already started with a 3D print that should be here on the 26th of November. The test print is for the Raspberry Pi case mount that will hold the additional devices in the APC UPS.

The end goal will be to present a device that can be built for around $100 for pen testing that blends seamlessly with a cube farm (Read: Office). 

I will write a follow-up post with what the system should deliver and the desired goals. 

Look for more soon.