Hard Disk Hacking (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Hard Disk Hacking (2013)

spritesmods.com

154 pointsjacquesm18 comments

Sprites is someone that I feel truly epitomises the original hacking spirit. His ability to understand the inner-workings of a large variety of things, strip them down to their bare elements and combine them in different ways to make something new is nothing short of impressive.

His hacks section is very entertaining (https://spritesmods.com/?art=hardware). My favourites are his Minecraft portal and his automatic jello-shot printer made from old CD-ROM parts.

What is interesting to me and why I posted it is that his intuition about how things might work tends to correlate highly with how they actually work even if at that point in time during the narrative I'd have absolutely no clue about what he comes up with. That's a very deep level of insight.

In the comments section of the last page:

http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=8

Poster "tr1ck5t3r" wrote at 15 Jan 2017, 15.46:

>"BadBios, BadUSB, Stuxnet, Flame, Duqu, Shamoon, are all different names given to the observations by experts of the same suite of malware that has evolved over the years."

That is the hypothesis my research into this subject also supports, although it is purely an intuitive hypothesis, not an empirical one, that is, at this point in time, I do not have concrete proof to back this intuition...

But tr1ck5t3r's comment is a very interesting comment, nonetheless...

Thanks for pointing that out, now I want to read the rest of the comments to look for other gems but it's just too long.

Here's an alternative take on HDD hacking:-

http://hazeii.net/images/2006/hddlaser.jpg

Laser projector made by hacksawing 2 hard disks in half, sticking chopped up bits of platter (as mirrors) to the head assembly and bolting in a laser pointer. Works well enough to draw a digital clock display on the wall.

> "Works well enough to draw a digital clock display on the wall."

That, I'd like to see (video).

Been meaning to write the project up for almost 15 years now, cameras have moved on so will send a notification once I grab a video (don't hold your breath :)).

If curious see also

2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6148347

2015 (a bit) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9425328

2016 (a bit) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12219599

hello dang i want to have a private chat with you

Anyone can contact me at hn@ycombinator.com.

I saw your talk at OHM, we were the guys that showed up with a crate of beer there. It was one of the best talks on the whole party, and i mentioned it to a ton of people in retrospect of the party. Keep up your amazing work, this deserves to be upvoted. Are you Dutch? Let me know if you are ever around amsterdam.

SpriteTM is a Dutch guy indeed. He currently lives in China working for Espressif though. He's been a member of a Dutch online tech community for years and years (and to be honest we mis him there!).

I pretty sure the author passed away from what I remember. I can confirm that the pinout, memory structure he shows remains true for current WD HDD drives still.

I don't think that is true:

https://twitter.com/SpritesMods

It sounds like you know the workings of these drives. Any advice on getting "ATA CMD Tracing" working on them? I saw that string in the firmware but I'm not smart enough to enable it myself :)

I want hack my phone. Because it is broken

I want hack my phone

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