This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers
I see in binary, I speak source code
Step on my toes, I'll post a million jpegs of you in a fag pose
In your digital stance, getting firewalled ho
Cause I'm riding the net in my six-fold
I was a dick with my 56
Now with my cable, I'm able to get that stable
On the out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo
On the digital highway, my name is Neo and I'm a hero
In a flash, I'll screw you on burning dream caps
You need some ISOs? Let me through my hard drive rifle
Our exchange you could never stifle
In a digital hug, you just caught the love bug
I bootlegged your CD, I caused a fight between Un and Jay-Z
Your CG, it's all gonna be free
Whether we take it by force or we take it nicely
You feel that rattle in your bones?
When I tell you we just hacked out Jones
And NASDAQ leaves your fight on your back
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack
This is dedicated to the hackers and the creepers
Serial codes, source codes, ISOs, RANs, SIFs, SISs
This is dedicated to the hackers and the creepers
Welcome to Binary Revolution Radio Episode 56
I am staying dog with you again this week
With a very special new co-host to the show
The one, the only, well, I guess you're the only
I've never heard of you before
Acidus is on the show with us today
Thanks, I'm glad to be here
And this is airing on August 3rd, 2004
We have got a lot of great topics
Acidus is going to go into a very, very detailed project
That he's working on
Go into a lot of detail in a project he's working on
I should say
So let's brush through the housekeeping
As quick as we can
The first thing that I want to talk about
And I mentioned last week
That we had some issues with the magazine
Completely my fault
The whole trip to Hope
Kind of threw me off kilter
Messed up my schedule a lot
So when I got back
I had to go hunt down a printer
And the first couple bailed on me
At the last minute
So short version is
That the magazines are now being printed
As we speak
So as you're listening to this
They are physically printing them up for us
I got the mock-ups earlier this week
They look fantastic
They absolutely look better than ever
They're going to be on the website soon
I've actually already coded the page
The HTML is all ready to go
As soon as I upload it
But I don't want to put it up
Until I have them in my hands
I don't want to
You know
Something fall through at the last minute
I probably jinxed myself
Bringing it up on the show now
And I don't have them in my hands
But I feel pretty confident
So issue 2.1
I will put that up
As well as back issues
So very very soon
It will not be much longer
That we will get the new issue out
Now
I have a few emails here
And the first email is from
El Taco Frio
Which by the way
I love that name
That is a cool name
That's just got such a great ring to it
To me
El Taco Frio
That of course is the frozen taco
Para ustedes que no habla espanol
And El Taco Frio
Says
Hey Stank
Met you up at Hope 5
After your presentation
I came up to you
And introduced myself
The S 400 presentation
Was really awesome
Your crash course
Is very very cool
Teaching a brother to fish
And you fed him
For a lifetime
I've been looking over your work
And I wanted to say
Thank you for taking
The immense amount of time
That it must take
To share what you will learn
And I'm really grateful
Check this thing out
And this thing
He sent me a link
It looks real
I haven't dug too deep into it
But it's one of those things
That makes you say
Wow
I'm just amazed
This guy's in the UK
My friend Sludge Bohol
Is the one that found it
Anyhow thanks for sharing
Such an amazing amount
Of practical knowledge
Actually
El Taco Frio
I'm the one that's grateful
I'm just so glad
That people want to learn
And learn along with me
Because I'm learning
Every time I do the show
I learn
You know
That's why I like doing the show
So no
I'm the one
To thank you guys
For listening
Second of all
Corny stuff aside
Being the nice guy
That I am
This very long link
That he sent
I made a tiny URL
Which is not
Theory's favorite tool
In the world
And the tiny URL link
Is tinyurl.com
Slash
Two
O-N-X-Y
And go check this out
Because
Basically what it is
Is it's a project
Someone
Where someone took
A Mini Cooper
Those little cars
Those little
I call them
Urkel mobiles
I don't know
What they really are
Urkel mobiles
They look like
The car from
The Urkel show
Remember that
The one he got
In the front
Yeah
The pimp mobile
It looks kind of
Like that
I know they're not
They're actually
Kind of neat looking cars
But he took
A Mini Cooper
And turned it
Into a functioning
Robot
I mean like
A for real
Functioning robot
The question is
Do they have like
A little transformer logo
On it
Yeah that's what I said
Dude this is a
This is a for real
This is a fat
Autobot dude
This is like
Optimus Prime
And shit right here
Darn it
I cussed on the show
Darn it
Oh well
Life goes on
Yeah I mean
I want
You know what
No you know what
He gets sued for copyright
If he put the transformers
You're probably right
Considering how fast
They're going after people
For copyright violation
Yeah exactly
It would be cool though
Yeah
Maybe if he just
Altered it a tiny bit
Yeah I wonder
If you know how
You've got the whole
Photoshopping photos
Can you see if you're real
I mean
You know with the
Proliferation of
Really good video
Editing software
You know hell
Anybody who's got
A Mac can do it
Really high speed
Connections
And burners
For DVDs
I think we're going to
See like a whole
New generation
Of really cool
But fake videos
Yes
Actually I mentioned
One on the show
Before
Have you ever seen
Batman Dead End
No
Oh you've got to go
Google for that
After the show
Batman Dead End
It's some fan made
It's not even a fan made
I think it was
Professionally done
As like a demo
Of the guy's ability
Fantastic
It's what every
Batman movie
Should have been
It's awesome
Anyway
Back from that tangent
So yeah
Go check that out
Again it's
TinyURL.com
Slash
Two
O-N-X-Y
Now our second
Email tonight
Comes from
Someone who
Had their real name
And we don't read
That on the air
Of course
And he says
He or she says
Was listening to
Episode 40
And looked into
The crazy
The human
HML submitter
Is
RexB
At Starborn.com
His site
Which is horrible
Think a
Geocities graduate
Also
Humanmarkup.org
Is linked from his
Well
Sort of
Anyway
This is kind of
Broken here
I'm not sure
If I'm reading
This correctly
Apparently he
Doesn't know
HTML
I'm worried
About his
Ability to use
XML
In any
Standard
It's a load
Of crazy
A load
Of funny
Check it out
First of all
That was
Episode 40
And we're on
56 today
So that was
Quite a while
Back
It's really cool
That people
Are listening
To the old
Episodes
So first of all
That's kind of
Cool
I'm glad
We keep them
In rotation
Rent Radio
Has them
In rotation
And we have
Them for download
So that's cool
That people
Actually go back
And listen to them
And we put up
Show notes
And actually
Let me take
Another tangent
A little segue
Here
Because
I actually
Moved
That I mentioned
In the forums
I actually
Moved off
Season 1
Of Binary
Revolution Radio
Off to a
Separate page
I have show
Notes for each
Episode
So people can
Search and find
Things they want
Quickly if they
Don't remember
Exact episodes
And the page
Was getting
Pretty cumbersome
It was like
200k
So for dial
Up users
I didn't want
To have to
Wait and load
Stuff over and
Over again
So I kind of
Moved everything
Off so you
Don't have to
Wait for all
That stuff to
Load anymore
So I'm
Sorry I had
An opening there
And I took it
Hey go for it
So anyway
Yes episode 40
Was back in
Season 1
Quite a little
Bit of ways
And Human ML
It's just
I never got it
I'm still going
To try to be
Nice and say
That I'm just
Missing something
Maybe it's
Maybe there's
Something that
This can be
Used for that
I don't get
But I just
Don't get it
I mean Human ML
Was an XML
Subset
It was an XML
Substandard
That was somehow
Supposed to
Display emotions
Like emoticons
On crack
Yeah and that's
Exactly the joke
I made on the
Show just about
I said it was
Like you know
It's basically
A fancy emoticon
Okay so
Like vector based
Graphics
Good idea
Math ML
Good idea
Emotion based
XML
That's retarded
Well and someone
Pointed out to me
That perhaps it
Could be used
For people that
Have disabilities
Or blindness
Or things like
That and I'm
Like I don't
See where it
Helps them
Really very much
Either
And secondly
You can't count
On any of that
Code because
I mean not that
You can count on
If you're talking
To someone face
To face and
They're a good
Liar
You're not going
To know the
Difference
But giving them
This human markup
Language
Everybody can be
A good liar
Because you have
No way of
Knowing it
If they code
In their XML
Emotion equals
Smile
Yeah
Meanwhile they're
Lying through
I mean it's
Just too easy
To not spoof
But fake
You know
People are going
To accept it
As like a trust
Model
But it's totally
Voluntary
Yeah and I'm
Sure this guy's
Getting a lot
Of money
Yes
To you know
Government grants
And stuff to research
Well I'm not sure
Of that I shouldn't
Make accusations
I'll back up
It is amazing
How the worst
Ideas do get
The most funding
Yeah and it's
Just ridiculous
When other ideas
Don't get any funding
But or get cut
But hey
Anyway I'll back
Off that
But he does
Have a good point
In his email
Here and that's
Frankly if you
Can't code HTML
How do you have
Any credibility
To develop an
XML substandard
Exactly
I mean seriously
I mean his face
Does I mean he
Nailed it with
That GeoCities
Graduate
Plus because
HTML is a
Heck of a lot
More forgiving
Than XML
I mean it
You know the
Renderers are so
Smart like Mozilla
And IE
They can take
Even the crappiest
HTML and make
Something pretty
Out of it
Yeah it's
Yeah I just
Don't know
What more we
Can say
I mean that
We've beaten
That dead horse
In the ground
I guess
Human markup
Language just
Seems to me
To be a waste
You know
I don't know
Maybe five years
Down the road
It'll be all
The rave
And I'll be
The biggest idiot
On the planet
That's fine
We will have
Missed like
The opportunity
To buy the
Stock
And you know
At a penny
Or something
We'll be in
The poor house
Exactly
Darn it
Oh man
All right
Let's see
One more email
Here
And this is
Actually
This is a very
Very cool email
This is from
G.I. Joe
He's a regular
Listener
A good friend
Of the show
Who says
Stank
I am sending
This email
To this address
And thinking
It might be
Something other
People might be
Interested in doing
When 2.1
Is up for sale
By mail
I plan on
Ordering a couple
Copies
One for myself
And one to
Donate to my
Local library
The only problem
Is I don't want
To donate it
And then have
Them put it
On the book
Sales shelf
Or something
Right away
Or probably
Just send it
To them
Or drop it
Off
But I want
To include
A letter
Or note
So they
Don't just
Toss it
Any suggestions
Of what to say
Maybe just
Explain what
The magazine
Is
Thanks
Um
Yeah
I mean
That's just
Such a
I know
I get corny
You know
But that is
Such an
Awesome gesture
I mean
That's
That's what
The community
Is about
That's what
Giving back
And expanding
And trying to
Spread
What real
Hacking is
You know
Instead of
The bad
Names
Um
That's fantastic
And I'll
Gladly send you
An extra copy
For the library
Don't worry
About that
I would
Actually
You said
A good point
About the
Bad name
I would
Actually
Unless you're
Really antisocial
Or don't want
To leave your room
I would actually
Suggest the person
Hand deliver it
You know
I think
Librarians
Would be
A heck of a lot
More willing
To take it
And actually
Give it the
Respect it
Deserved
Instead of
Just throwing it
On a back shelf
If you
Hand delivered it
Maybe took some
Time to explain
To them
What it was about
So that they
Didn't immediately
Look at it
And say
Hacking
Okay trash
Exactly
And I
That's what I was
Saying
I don't know
What you could
Really write
Or what you
Could really
Say so much
To convince
Them to keep
Or to make
It
Convince them
That it's
Worthwhile
And it's
Not trash
Me in
In general
I'm a very
Honest person
And I would
Just walk up
To them
Flat out
And say
Listen
Here's a
Hacking magazine
But it's
Not what you
Think
It's
You know
It's a
Counter to
The mass media's
Portrayal of
Hackers
And yada yada yada
That they're
Not all bad
This is a
Real hacking magazine
From the scene
From people
Who get it
And know it
And understand
What it's about
Exactly
And explain that
To them
And it's
Really fitting
That in this
Particular issue
I was rather
Proud
If I can be
Of my intro
To this
Because my intro
Was all about
The whole black hat
White hat
Gray hat
You know
How you label
Hackers
And how they
Get mislabeled
So maybe
I don't know
You know
Make that
Decision
If you think
It's worthwhile
Maybe just have
Them read
That first
Two page
Introduction
Maybe they
Will like that
And they will
Understand it
And realize it
Because when
People go into
A library
The majority
Of the time
Let's be honest
The majority
Of the time
They're going
In for research
For a project
Or something
They're being
Forced to do
And when they
Go in
And let's say
There's somebody
Is interested
In hacking
Or computer
Security
Or just
Counterculture
Whatever they
Whatever they're
Researching
All they're ever
Going to find
Is
Take down
With Shimomura
All they're
Going to find
Is
All these
Mass media
Things
And all
This bad
Stuff
And the
Hacker
Crackdown
And all
These
Negative
Stuff
We
You know
Maybe
That's worth
Mentioning
You want
To have
Something
That's
Positive
You want
To have
Something
That counteracts
That shows
People an
Alternative
Viewpoint
So that when
They do
Research
They get
Fair and
Balanced
Research
They get
The alternative
Side of the
Coin
So I
Would love
For this
To happen
And I
Hope
That this
This really
Does go
Through
I really
I think
This is a
Great idea
And hopefully
People will
Email you
Back and tell
You if they
Have any
Success
I mean
I know
You gave
Me some
At some
Of the
Bin
Rebs
At Hope
And I'll
Swing by
Some of
The libraries
Here up
In Atlanta
And see
If they'll
Take them
And I'll
Tell you
How it
Works
Yeah
What the
Reaction
Is and
How they
You know
How they
Handle it
And how
They react
You know
Yeah
That's
Awesome
You know
We
Our
Listeners
We really
Have very
Very cool
Listeners
They do
All kinds
Of great
Stuff
Like this
They're
Always
Sending
In
Calling
Card
Numbers
And stuff
To share
With the
Community
And sending
In information
And links
And volunteering
Their time
And putting
Up sites
And just
Man
We
I'm not
Blowing smoke
Up the
Audience's ass
We really
Have just
The coolest
Listeners
We really
Do
I mean
We were
Handing out
Gmail accounts
Like candy
You know
Everybody's
Selling them
On ebay
And putting
Up websites
And you
Know
Sponsored
By the
Broken
And the
Random
You might
Get a
Gmail
If you
Click on
These ads
Or reload
The ads
500 times
We were
Handing them
Out
Because that's
The way
Our people
Our listeners
They
They care
And they
Want to
Help out
Each other
And
Anyway
I'm
Getting all
Corny now
It's a very
Special episode
Of binary
Revolution
Radio
I need a
Moment
I'm getting
Reclamped
Okay
Into the
Show and
Tell portion
Of the show
What we've
Been working
On lately
And I've
Got a
Little beef
And you
And I
Were talking
About this
Before we
Started
Recording
But I've
Got some
Issues
I just
Put in
A KVM
Switch
At the
House
Finally
Thanks
Actually
To Logan
Five
He put
Up a
Link to
Belkin
Of
Sale
That they
Were having
50%
Off
Finally
Got a
KVM
Switch
Which I've
I've been
Putting
I've been
Putting that
Off
All this
Time
So I'm
Putting all
My boxing
Together
On one
Nice fat
21 inch
Monitor
Freeing up
Some space
So during
That whole
Process
I decided
To rebuild
A few
Of them
I install
Sousa
9.1
On one
Of them
And boot
That into
KDE
The newest
KDE
And the
Other one
I downloaded
And burned
The ISOs
With Mandrake
10
Well dammit
Mandrake
10
Is fuck
Sword
I don't know
If that's
Called swearing
Or not
I can
Completely
Agree
With you
I've had
A bad
Experience
With Mandrake
10
As well
As we were
Talking about
In front of
The show
I would
Highly
Recommend
Everyone
You know
Mandrake
10
Has got
A lot
Of
Cool
Things
They're
Using
The
New
Version
Of
KDE
The
Burner
Software
K3D
I believe
It is
The
DVD
Burning
Unless
You need
That
Stick
With
9.1
Or
9.2
It's
Only
The
2.4
Kernel
You can
Upgrade
The
Kernel
If you
Want
But
It's
Not
A good
Release
I love
Mandrake
I think
It's
Fantastic
That
There's
A
Friendly
Distro
That
My
Mom
Can
Use
But
Damn
Well
Not
10
That's
For
Sure
Yeah
Not
10
And
That's
Really
What
Made
Me
Mad
More
Than
Anything
Is
Like
I
Tried
Two
Different
Installs
And
It
Screwed
Up
I
Tried
It
The
Third
Time
And
This
Time
I
Carefully
I
Switched
Over
To
Different
Run
Levels
And
I
Saw
That
It
Was
Spitting
Out
A
Bunch
Of
Errors
That
Were
Bad
Track
Bad
Sector
Stuff
Like
This
And
I'm
Thinking
To
Myself
Oh
Well
That's
Why
It's
Not
Installing
My
Hard
Drive
Has
Gone
Bad
Or
Something
Right
I
Was
Like
I
Was
Ready
To
Throw
The
Hard
Drive
Out
It
Was
Old
You
Know
I'm
Like
Sure
It's
Probably
Dead
Just
Said
But
What
Makes
Me
Mad
Is
Mandrake
Which
Yes
I
Like
Mandrake
Too
It's
Becoming
One
Of
My
Favorite
Distros
Actually
I
Think
It's
The
Cleanest
And
Easiest
To
Use
And
Generally
Something
You
Can
Promote
To
New
Users
I
Think
It's
The
Best
Representation
At
Least
Since
Red
Hat
Gone
Exactly
So
And
Even
Then
It
Was
Right
Up
There
With
Red
Hat
But
Anyway
If
I
Hand
Out
My
Linux
Distros
At
Different
Meetings
And
To
People
I
Come
Across
Who
Say
They
Want
To
Learn
Linux
If
I
Would
Have
Handed
This
Over
To
Somebody
I
Would
Have
Actually
Turned
Someone
Off
To
Linux
And
I
Don't
Understand
How
They
Released
Something
Like
This
And
Actually
It
Was
Zero
DB
Told
Me
On
The
Phone
I'm
Actually
Cussing
I'm
Talking
To
Zero
To
And
Cussing
He's
Like
What's
Wrong
I
Like
Mandrake
10
Screwing
Up
On
He's
Like
Oh
Yeah
That's
A
Known
Issue
So
Sure
Enough
I
Go
On
And
Google
A
Little
Bit
And
I
Found
Yeah
A lot
Of
People
Are
Having
That
Problem
Well
Damn
It
We
Don't
Need
To
Turn
People
Off
They
Need
To
Be
More
Careful
I
Friendly
Distros
And
Your
Business
Model
Really
Isn't
So
Much
That
You
Can
Alienate
A
Lot
Of
People
You
Think
They
Put
A
Lot
More
Quality
Assurance
In
Before
They
Release
Something
Like
That
Yeah
I
Just
Hope
That
It
Wasn't
A
Case
Of
Try
To
Hurry
Up
And
Get
Out
Of
10
You
Know
We
Got
To
Get
Out
10
We
Got
To
Get
Out
10
Slack
We
Got
Out
10
Right
Well
And
Speaking
Of
Slack
Where
I
Did
Download
Slack
We're
10
So
The
Next
Box
I
Put
Together
I'm
Probably
Going to
Pick up
A new
Box
This
Weekend
I'm
Finally
Rolling
Off
My
Actually
I'm
Not
Even
Going to
Put
Plan
9
On
There
Zero
Db
Convinced
Me
To
Give
Plan
9
A
Shot
I'm
Going to
Suck
With
It
But
I'm
Going to
See
What
I can
Figure
I'll
See
If I
Like
It
I
Have
To
Actually
Point
Out
Since
We
Were
Talking
About
Friendly
Distress
There
Were
Articles
On
Slash.
Maybe
In
The
Last
Month
Or
So
They
Were
Linked
To
One
Of
These
Linux
World
Websites
Or
Something
And
They
Were
Talking
About
Using
Slack
Ware
As
Really
A
Desktop
Capable
OS
And
Slack
Ware
Is
Really
Known
As
Being
The
Nicest
With
Configuration
Tools
These
Were
A
Series
Of
Articles
Kind
Of
Walking
Up
Setting
Up
Sounds
Setting
Up
KDE
Setting
Up
Some
Of
These
Nice
Windowing
Systems
I
Highly
Suggest
People
Who
Want
Nice
Stability
Don't
Write
Off
Slack
Ware
And
There
Are
Articles
Out
There
To
Make
It
Good
Yeah
I
Admit
I'm
Not
The
Most
Proficient
Person
With
Linux
Not
Very
Proficient
At
All
Actually
My
Background
Was
Mostly
With
Solaris
So
I'm
Terrible
With
Any
Of
The
GUIs
I
Can't
Navigate
Around
KDE
Very
Well
I
Can't
Navigate
Around
Gnome
Very
Well
So
That's
What
I'm
Doing
I'm
Putting
Three
Different
Distros
On
These
Three
Boxes
Each
One
With
A
Different
Window
Manager
To
Kind
Of
Linux
Boxes
I
Just
The
Mouse
Goes
Crazy
Is
It
A
PS2
Or
USB
It's
A
PS2
It
Is
A
PS2
But
I
Don't
Know
If
It's
A
Problem
With
Drivers
But
Since
It
Happens
With
Every
Distro
And
I
Don't
Know
If
They're
All
Using
The
Same
It
Isn't
Until
A
Mouse
Explorer
So
There
Could
Be
Driver
Issues
Driver
Issues
With
It
But
I'm
Also
Thinking
More
A
Friend
Of
Mine
Actually
Mentioned
That
It
Might
Be
The
Type
Of
Box
That
You're
Using
Because
Linux
Wants
To
Always
Know
And
Have
Access
To
The
Mouse
And
If
You
Switch
Over
And
It
Can't
Find
The
Mouse
For
Whatever
Reason
That
It
Kind
Of
Gets
Confused
Sometimes
This
Is
A
Powered
Box
I
Just
Don't
Have
The
AC
Adapter
I
Don't
Know
If
It's
Laying
Here
On
This
Mess
That
I
Call
A
Desk
Somewhere
And
I
Misplaced
It
Or
If
I
Just
Didn't
Get
One
With
This
Particular
KBM
Well
A
Note
To
Viewers
PS2
Ports
Unlike
USB
Which
Is
Built
To
Have
The
Power
Pulled
From
It
And
Plugged
Back
In
PS2
Don't
Really
Like
To
Be
Unplugged
And
Plugged
In
A
Lot
While
The
Machine
Still
Going
I
Keep
That
Constant
Power
Going
To
It
And
That
Might
Solve
The
Problem
So
I
Will
Be
Checking
Into
That
In
The
Upcoming
Weeks
Or
Week
It
Might
Take
Me
Weeks
To
Dig
Through
This
Mound
Of
Crap
On
My
Desk
It's
Funny
I'm
Cleaning
Up
I'm
Trying
To
Get
The
KBM
Switch
So
I
Can
Make
Room
And
Clean
Up
But
In
The
Meant
I
Pulled
The
Brush
The
Week
That
You
Had
Oh
Man
So
I
Am
Is
Anyone
Who
Has
You
Know
Stank
Dog
Introduced
Me
As
The
One
Only
As
You
May
Have
Heard
Me
From
A
Little
Spat
With
A
Company
Called
Blackboard
And
From
That
It
May
Be
Known
That
I
Have
A
University
Student
At
Georgia
Tech
In
Atlanta
And
I
Just
Finished
Up
Finals
Week
Oh
And
It
Was
A
Pain
In
The
Butt
In
Fact
I
Was
Thinking
About
Going
To
Def
Con
But
I
Couldn't
Get
My
Computer
Ethics
Final
Moved
Which
Was
A
Fun
Conversation
With
The
Ethics
Professor
Of
Hey
Can
I
Move
The
Final
Why
Because
I
Have
To
A
Hacker
Con
Yeah
The
Irony
The
Irony
Of
It
All
So
Like
You
I
Do
A
Holy
Crap
My
Room
Is
Piled
With
Plates
With
Pizza
And
Cups
Everywhere
And
Books
And
Notes
And
Clothes
It
Is
Just
Insane
I
Have
Taken
The
Last
Three
Days
And
Tried
To
Be
Recuperating
Well
It
Is
Over
Now
Right
Yes
I
Finished
Up
Friday
Now
I
Have
That
Three
Four
Day
Lull
When
You
Wait
For
The
Grades
To
Come
In
And
See
If
You
Pulled
It
On
The
Finals
Like
You
Hope
You
Did
Oh
I
Sure
You
Did
I
Have
Complete
Confidence
You
You're
One
Of
Those
People
That's
Going
To
Ace
Every
One
Of
Them
But
You're
Going
To
Pretend
Like
You're
Worried
Oh
That
We'll
See
We'll
See
But
Luckily
I've
Still
Had
Time
For
A
Couple
Of
Projects
I
Mean
We're
Going
To
Be
Talking
About
Stripe
Snoop
Which
Is
The
Mag
Stripe
Software
Later
In
Name
As
Much
Because
It
Circumvents
SpecterSoft
Is
This
Pretty
Much
The
Number
One
Spyware
Monitoring
Software
Sold
In
The
United
States
They
Capture
Screen
Logs
Emails
AIM
Conversations
Web
Traffic
Pretty
Much
Everything
You
Do
It
Captures
It
And
It's
Aggressive
It's
Marketed
Aggressively
To
Parents
And
To
Businesses
And
I
Just
Fundamentally
Have
A
Problem
With
This
Whole
Concept
And
So
I
Wrote
Some
Software
Which
Will
Decrypt
Not
Really
Decrypt
Just
Decompress
All
This
Captured
Content
All
You
To
View
It
Modify
It
Or
Even
Create
Your
Own
New
One
So
You
Know
When
Whoever
Was
Monitoring
The
Computer
Goes
To
See
What
Was
Happening
They
See
You
Browsing
The
As
Website
Or
Anything
You
Want
Them
To
See
Disney
You
Guys
Can
Actually
Look
At
That
Right
Now
There
There's
A
Source
Forge
Page
On
It
But
I
Haven't
Moved
It
From
My
Home
Page
My
Home
Page
Is
www.yak
Y-A-K
Dot
Net
Slash
Acidus
A-C-I-D-U-S
And
You
Can
Email
Me
At
Acidus
At
Yak
Dot
Net
So
Phasmatis
It's
Putting
A
Lot
Of
Work
In
The
Stripe
Snoop
Which
Stank
And
I
Are
Going
To
Be
Talking
About
A
Couple
Other
Since
You
Brought
It
Up
I'm
Going
To
Put
You
On
The
Spot
And
Say
You're
Going
To
Come
Back
And
We're
Going
To
Go
Into
Detail
About
That
Right
There
I
Would
Love
To
In
In fact
I
Encourage
Anyone
In
The
Southeast
Come on
Out
To
Freaknik
It's
A
Conference
Held
In
Nashville
Even
If
You've
Never
Been
To
A
Hacker
Conference
Before
This
Isn't
A
Hacker
Conference
I
Always
Try
To
Tell
People
Hacker
Conferences
Aren't
What
You
Think
This
Is
Essentially
A
Big
Party
It
Is
Over
The
Course
Of
A
Weekend
There's
Only
One
Speaking
Track
So
You
Don't
Have
To
Worry
About
Seeing
One
And
Missing
Some
Of
The
Talk
You
Wanted
I've
Given
A
Talk
They're
Actually
On
Spector
Soft
So
Hopefully
Stag
Will
Do
Our
Show
Get
Some
More
Interest
And
Some
Of
The
Regular
Listeners
Know
I
Switched
Jobs
Fairly
Recently
And
I
Really
Wanted
To
Go
To
Def
Con
But
I
Just
Couldn't
Ask
Off
Again
It
I
Was
Actually
Thinking
Maybe
I
Could
Get
Something
Together
By
Then
I
Don't
Know
What
The
Well
Anyway
We'll
Take
That
Off
Line
You
Can
Tell
Anybody
I
Actually
Just
Brought
Up
The
Web
Page
It
Is
October
22nd
Through
The
24th
In
Nashville
The
Rooms
Are
Cheap
They're
About
62
Bucks
A
Night
It's
A
Great
Con
Everyone
Should
Come
Yeah
And
You
Know
I
Have
My
Good
Friend
Voodoo
Hal
From
The
DDP
He's
Up
There
In
Tennessee
So
He
Can
I'm
Sure
He
Can
Give
Me
The
Hook
Ups
Up
There
Show
Me
Where
The
Ladies
Hang
Out
I'm
Sorry
To
Hang
Out
At
Freak
Nick
Is
What
I
meant
To
Say
Oh
Man
Yeah
I
Really
Am
Going
To
Try
To
Make
It
Definitely
Going
To
Try
To
Make
It
Up
There
And
Well
I'm
Going
Now
On
Because
I
Had
Such
A
Blast
At
Hope
But
We've
Done
Two
Episodes
On
Hope
So
We're
Not
Going
To
Spend
Any
More
We're
On
Hope
Yeah
We'll
Transition
Actually
From
Hope
Which
Was
Put
On
By
2600
Magazine
Oh
Beautiful
Transition
And
Let's
Actually
Talk
About
The
Current
Issue
Of
2600
Magazine
Occasionally
I
Will
Bring
Up
A
Specific
Article
I've
Done
Some
Reviews
Of
Like
Blacklisted
411
Some
Old
Ones
Just
For
The
Nostalgia
Aspect
I've
Never
Actually
Done
Reviews
Of
The
Magazine
On
The
Air
So
I
Thought
We'd
Take
I'm
Not
Going
To
Do
A
Long
One
But
I
Thought
We'd
Talk
About
This
Particular
Issue
Because
I
Happen
To
Think
That
This
Is
Easily
One
Of
The
Best
Issues
Of
2600
In
Years
Exactly
This
Is
The
Summer
2004
Issue
That's
On
Sale
Now
Right
Summer
2004
Volume
21
Number
2
With
The
Little
Kids
On
The
Cover
And
The
Little
Hidden
I
Probably
Shouldn't
Ruin it
There's
A
Little
Hidden
Thing
On
The
Cover
But
I
Won't
Ruin it
For
The
People
Who
Haven't
Read
It
Yet
But
Check
For
The
Little
Hidden
Bonus
There
I
Encourage
Everyone
Look
At
Old
2600
Covers
There's
Almost
Always
Something
Hidden
Somewhere
And
The
Table
Of
Contents
Which
I
Don't
Know
If
You
Purposely
Did
That
Or
We'll
Pretend
You
Purposely
Did
That
For
A
Pimp
Of
My
Article
Called
2600
Secrets
An
Article
I
Did
With
Nick
84
And
I
Put
Together
Which
Is
A
List
Of
All
Those
Hidden
Things
Oh
Really
I
Didn't
Know
That
And
It's
Available
Stank
Dog
Dot
Com
And
You
Go
Check
That
Once
You
Write
The
Article
You
Kind
Have
A
Tendency
To
Push
It
To
The
Side
That
Is
Very
True
It's
Hard
Because
I
Also
Have
The
Hacker
Movies
List
Of
Just
Movies
That
Have
Hacking
And
Hacker
Related
Stuff
In
Them
And
That's
So
Hard
To
Keep
Updated
I
Need
Somebody
To
Volunteer
To
Take
That
Over
And
Update
That
Or
Put
A
Web
Up
For
There's
Probably
A
Web
Ring
We
Were
Talking
Before
The
Show
There's
A
Web
Ring
For
Everything
I
Hate
Kroger
Web
Ring
Kroger
Sucks
But
Yeah
Anyway
This
Particular
Episode
I
Really
Think
Is
One
Of
The
Best
Ones
Ever
I
Probably
I
Try
To
Stay
Positive
I
Don't
Want
To
Say
Too
Much
Negative
Stuff
But
I
Just
Say
That
I
Skipped
Right
Over
The
Introduction
I
Don't
Usually
Read
That
Very
Technical
We
Finally
Got
Back
To
Some
Technical
Topics
And
Much
Lighter
On
The
Politics
Which
Is
What
I
Just
Can't
Stand
I
Don't
Like
I
Keep
My
Hacking
Separate
From
My
Politics
Which
Is
Exactly
What
You
And
I
Were
Talking
About
Before
We
Were
Recording
To
Keep
Those
Two
Things
Separate
To
Me
Your
Political
Beliefs
And
Your
Politics
Is
A
Personal
Decision
And
A
Personal
Thing
I
Don't
Like
Them
Being
Thrown
And
Forced
Into
My
Hacking
Don't
Mix
Them
You
Know
Yeah
I
Mean
There
Is
A
Little
Mixture
You
Know
With
Privacy
Laws
Or
DMCA
Or
Carnivore
But
I
Mean
Right
Where
Your
Opinion
On
The
Iraq
War
Is
Or
The
Economy
I
Mean
I
Think
Hackers
Generally
Are
All
Pro
Privacy
Exactly
And
Yeah
We
Do
Talk
About
Some
Of
Those
Topics
But
Even
That
We
Try
To
Keep
It
To
A
Minimum
Because
There
Are
Other
Shows
That
Talk
About
The
That
Are
More
Into
Privacy
And
Stuff
Like
That
Where
We
Try
To
Stay
Technical
Yeah
We
Touch
On
Because
I
Do
Feel
Strongly
About
Some
Of
That
Right
But
This
Particular
Issue
Was
A
Code
Have
Like
A
Link
On
The
Bin
Rev
Website
For
It
Yes
Brack
Is
Fantastic
Because
They
Have
Like
The
Source
Code
In
The
Article
And
When
You
Download
It
You
Get
Your
Source
Code
That
Sucks
With
2600
You
Have
To
Hand
Type
It
In
Or
Hope
To
God
That
The
Person
Who
Wrote
The
Article
That
URL
Still
Works
Right
Yeah
And
That
Like
I
Said
Because
That
You
Know
It
Long
It
Saves
You
A
Lot
Of
Typing
I
Agree
100%
Again
There
Was
There
Was
Some
I
Didn't
Want
To
Go
Through
All
Of
These
But
Feel
Free
If
There's
Any
You
Wanted
To
Single
Out
Like
There's
Scumware
Spyware
Adware
Sneakware
Which
I
Love
The
Gator
Logo
Because
I
Hate
That
Oh
My
God
I
Hate
That
So
Bad
That
Was
A
Very
Well
Written
Article
Clear
Channel
Article
There
Was
An
Impromptu
Lockpicks
Article
In
Here
Which
The
Reason
I
Wanted
To
Single
That
One
Out
Is
Because
It
Came
With
Photos
It
Came
With
Pictures
Very
Clear
Good
Quality
Had
A
Fantastic
Kind
Of
So
You
Know
In
Bin
Red
We
Have
A
Lot
Of
Embedded
Graphics
A
Lot
Of
Pictures
But
They
All
Lend
To
The
Article
You
Know
They
Give
It
And
I
Think
2600
Is
Becoming
Much
More
Visual
Lately
So
That's
Very
Much
A
Good
Thing
Because
This
Article
I
Don't
Know
How
You
Could
Have
Pulled
This
Off
Without
These
Pictures
You
Trying
To
Describe
Them
Is
Not
The
Same
As
Actually
Looking
At
These
And
Seeing
Oh
I
See
What
He
Did
I
See
How
He
Bent
The
You
Know
So
That's
Cool
Then
There
Was
Some
Other
Crappy
Article
That
We'll
Come
Back
To
That
One
Listening
Via
Linux
Or
Via
I
Don't
Know
People
Say
That
Different
Ways
Listening
Via
Linux
I
Mean
Calling
It
An
Article
It
Certainly
Was
Good
Don't
Get
Me
Wrong
Because
A lot
Of
People
That
Read
I
Mean
You
Get
You
Know
The
Whole
Range
Of
Technical
Skills
Of
People
Who
Read
2600
And
This
Was
A
Fantastic
Introduction
To
Socket
Programming
In
C
And
Specifically
In
Linux
Because
It
Is
Really
Easy
To
Set
Up
Servers
In
Linux
I
Am
Going
Have
To
Plug
There
Is
A
Fantastic
Tutorial
On
The
Internet
It
Is
Called
Beej's
Networking
Guide
That
B
E
J
Network
Guide
Type
Those
Three
Things
Into
Google
You
Get
It
This
Is
How
Learn
To
Do
Network
Programming
Yeah
And
We
Will
Put
That
Link
Up
In
The
Show
Notes
Too
Afterwards
Whenever
We
Get
Around
To
Putting
Up
Show
Notes
But
Yeah
That
I
Like
It
I
Thought
This
Was
One
Of
The
Better
Articles
Because
The
Fact
That
It
Did
Have
Code
It
Had
Not
Only
Did
It
Have
Code
But
Well
Documented
Code
Oh
Yes
Good
2600
Would
Do
Code
I
Think
They
Would
Take
People's
Comments
Out
To
Get
It
To
Fit
In
The
Bottom
Of
The
Page
Or
Something
Oh
No
That
It
Is
This
Pearl
Script
It
What
The
Is
That
Yeah
No
I
Glad
You
Brought
That
Up
Because
My
Code
Which
I
Mean
My
Code
Is
So
Verbose
I
Mean
I
Have
Really
Had
Programs
Where
I
Had
Almost
As
Many
Comments
As
I
Did
Lines
Of
Code
Some
Of
The
Short
Ones
Yeah
I
Mean
It
It's
I
I'm
Very
Verbose
Because
I
Know
That
People
Are
Going
To
Follow
Me
And
Inherit
My
Code
Especially
When
You
Work
For
business. Honestly, as an aside, when you're working at a company, people are going to come
behind you. You're not going to be at the same place for years and years. And you can take that
attitude of, you know what, well, screw them because I'm going to be long gone. But I don't.
I believe in open source. I understand and I like the open source movement and I want people to see
and learn from my code, even if it's not necessarily open source. I still have that mindset. So even
when I work for a company, I put comments and explanations of why I did things and how I did
things. And even then, I still know some people aren't going to get them behind me.
But, you know, the prime thing, I've got a couple of friends of mine. They work for some local
security companies and they say, you know, the first thing you do when you join this company
before you even get into development, almost always the bottom slot is maintenance because
maintaining a code base is the lifeblood of a company in addition to developing. I mean,
they've got to keep the existing companies happy. And so your first job most likely is going to be
keeping, you know, somebody else's code up to date, keeping it maintained, fixing problems.
And you're going to be wishing they left the comments.
Exactly.
Don't screw the people behind you.
Yeah. And you're absolutely right. I've done that in almost every job that I've had.
You inherit code that other people had. And yes, I have found almost without fail that there's
been little or no documentation on it. And I actually go through and add documentation as
I'm updating it because you have to sit there and you have to follow through that code
yourself anyway. Yeah. So as I'm following through it, I start adding my comments, even
though it's not really my code. Then I figure out, okay, here's where the change needs to
go. I add the change, explain it. And now I've got not only the change that needed to
be done, but a fully documented program left in my wake. Exactly. You know? So yeah, that's
absolutely a good habit to get into.
The moral of the story is find the company StankDog works for and it stops there.
Go behind me and tell everybody how bad the code is. That seems to be the MO where I'm at. But
anyway, I'm not at it anymore, actually. That's a good thing. Now, there was also an article in
here that when I saw this, I almost cringed. I was like, we have a running joke where, and I think
everybody knows this about 2600, everybody's joke is, oh gee, do you think they're going to have
another how to host on a cable modem article again?
Oh God, yeah.
Every single one that comes out. Well, the other joke besides that were the QCAD articles.
There were so many of them. And not so bad with 2600, but just all over the web.
Yeah.
Tons of QCAD articles. So when I flipped through this one and I saw it, I was like, oh, not
another one. But you know what? This was, I think, the most clever article in the whole
issue.
This was interesting. I'll give it that. It was short, too. We're talking a third of a page.
Yeah. S-A-R-A-I-N. I don't know if it's Sarain or, I hope I don't mispronounce. Very short
article, but very clever. It's not about how to hack your QCAD or how to declaw your QCAD
or blah, blah, blah. It was an interesting new use for your QCAD. And I thought it was
very cool. And maybe I'm a little too paranoid here, but what I think of is, I don't know if
talking about it too much is going to ruin the article, people haven't got there yet,
but I guess you should have. Well, anyway, the method, the technique that he describes,
what I'm thinking of is, even if you do that and you use that, if for some reason someone
comes behind you and tries to break into your computer or sneak into your computer, if they
don't know you're using this method, they'll never guess. They'll never figure out, you know,
it's going to be hard. But of course, if they do, you've drastically reduced the key space
you'd have to brute force. Well, let's say, yes. But you were talking earlier, you know,
it's all about giving back to the scene. You know, it's all about real hacking and real
hacking very much is, you know, we were talking about this before we started recording. It's
finding new uses, finding new uses for existing technology, taking something and doing something
with it that no one ever expected. You know, at the talk at Hope, I think I was saying something
along the lines of, got actually a lot of applause, like, do you think Marconi and Tesla could have
invented the radio if they hadn't had the telegraph to screw around with? And it's looking at existing
technology, doing stuff with it that people never intended, and then taking that to the next
level. And that's how innovation happens. Yeah. And this is just a prime, I mean, granted,
it's another QCAT, but it's something we've never seen. And it is just a great little example
of hacking, pure and simple. Absolutely. And it is. It's absolutely hacking. It's absolutely
a good article. And I, you know, kudos to him for coming up with a clever use of it.
Yes.
There are some more articles in here. There was a couple in here that I thought,
without singling any out, that I thought would have been better as letters,
letters to the editor. There was a couple things in here that were very well written.
They didn't particularly appeal to me, or it was things that I kind of didn't know or didn't
really get into that scene. Yeah.
And I think you know what I'm talking about. But it was well written and well organized.
Yeah.
So they definitely get points for that. And if I can also make a little, a little aside,
a little tangent on that topic, I don't know if you're going to feel the same way here,
but frankly, again, I know this kind of sounds corny, but when I started college, one of the
first classes you take is writing 101. And I was such a pompous ass in that class. And
I distinctly remember my professor. I would sit in the back and I just had this attitude.
First of all, I was younger anyway and had that know-it-all attitude anyway. But second
of all, I just had this attitude of, you know what, it's writing for God's sake. It's writing.
How hard is writing? Anybody can write. Do I really need to be in a class? I felt like
I wanted to take computer classes and I felt like my time was being wasted in this class.
But in retrospect, now that I'm older and hopefully a little wiser, that class, now when I read
articles, I can see poorly written articles and well-written articles. I can look at them
and see techniques and things that you can do to make your writing better and get your
point across more clearly and stuff like that. And frankly, as corny as it sounds, that is
the kind of thing that you learn in college. You learn organizational skills. You learn
writing skills. All these general things that I don't think I would have learned them had
I not gone to college.
True. In fact, we were just talking about how I finished up finals and I was saying my ethics
class. It was not only kind of an ethics class, a computer and society, but a lot of the things
we focused on was how to write papers convincing arguments. Not only in the debate, how to write
papers for an audience that's hostile to your point of view, how to write papers to an article
that is already agreeing with you. And really, I mean, you could have the greatest hack in
the world, but if you're writing it in elite, no one's going to read it.
Exactly. You learn about audience and how to adapt to your audience.
Exactly. In fact, I hate to pimp a textbook, but there was one that we read in this ethics class,
4001, it's at Georgia Tech. It's Writing Arguments by this guy, John D. Ramage, R-A-M-A-G-E.
Writing Arguments or Rhetoric with Readings. It's a really good book. I highly recommend it if you
want to learn how to actually write really good articles. I like to think that I write pretty good
articles. I've had several published in 2,600, and this is what I use to write those articles.
Yeah. Very good word, by the way. Rhetoric. That's a very cool word, and I think that's
a first for the show.
Oh, really? Excellent. We're up in the IQ.
It's such a great word, and I think you got the first use of that one on the show.
Excellent. I win a prize.
Let's see. There were some other good articles in here. Again, I don't want to spend too much
time on this. We're running short, and I want to make sure we get plenty of time to talk
about your article, actually. Let's back up to that, actually. Well, there was a cool
Netcat, fun with Netcat article in here I liked. Landtronics.
I have to keep commenting on all of these, and God forbid I may have to come on the show
again, and we can actually get to the real topics. Netcat is fantastic. The way I got
kind of my start, in addition to learning all about network programming, even before then,
I just had fun with Telnet, which is like what Netcat is. I highly recommend everyone.
Just Telnet to an FTP. Telnet to CNN.com, and then put a space and press port 80, and you
can type the commands your browser uses to actually get webpages. All those things called
RFCs, they tell you what commands to use. You can FTP. The way you used to send fake
mails, you used to Telnet to an SMTP port. I was going to say, everybody, you remember
that first feeling when you Telnet to an SMTP port, and you type in that hello?
Yes.
You know, you remember that. I mean, that was, yeah. I mean, that's like one of the first
experiences, you know?
And the fantastic thing about it is that one experience of, you know, writing a fake mail
and sending it to yourself, you know, sending yourself an email from God. You know, you learn
really, without even knowing it, you're touching on so many topics of network security, but
also just simple, the protocol, how mail gets forward. I mean, these little simple things
are so key, and this Netcat article was just a great example of that.
Yeah. Yeah, it was very good. Very good. Like I said, this was just a really good issue.
I'll stop talking now, I promise.
No, by all means. Dude, you're the co-host, man. You're supposed to be talking.
Excellent.
You're having, you're adding a lot of good stuff.
Excellent.
However, I will blow a little smoke up your ass right now.
Okay.
The best article in this issue, and the best article in several years, and I'm not saying
this just because you're here. What? I swear to God, I'm not. I mean this with all sincerity
to you, seriously. The Magstripe Interfacing, A Lost Art, which was your article in this issue,
and this is what we're going to talk about for the rest of the show. A, what I just mentioned
earlier, you can see someone with a college education writing. It's delineated. It's so
clear, so clearly written that even I could follow it. You know, so you know, you know
it was well written when even I can follow it. It had the illustrations in there exactly
where they should be so you understand it, because I'm not an EE. You know, electronics is
not my strong point, but I do understand the basics, and I can follow along when you have
the schematics in front of me.
Right.
You know, so it was very well placed, and you knew that was necessary as part of the article.
Again, without that, it would not have been as effective. And you added every single thing,
right down to the examples here of the sample of the Visa card that you added towards the
end.
Mm-hmm.
You know, all of this stuff. It was very well written, very interesting topic, and something
that no one, and you mentioned this in your history, and we'll actually, let's start talking
about this a little bit, that people really have not done much research in in quite a while.
No.
So, let's start off with like some general. This is not, I wouldn't say this is stuff that
you can find in the fact, but just generally, why don't you tell us, first of all, mag stripe
reading. We're talking about credit cards, anything with the magnetic strip on the back, your
ID card from school, things like that, correct?
The magnetic stripes, well, the whole reason I got into this, I was actually doing a research
project for a class.
Yeah. How did you get started in the first place?
Well, on this particular project, because in general, it's a very long story. On this
particular project, I was working, I was doing research for a class, which I actually have
a grant from the National Science Foundation to do research with a professor on. The professor
was so impressed. You know, we got together and wrote a grant, or wrote a grant proposal, and
I now have research to kind of pursue this, which, in some small way, utilizes mag stripes.
But, for a demonstration for this class, I needed to show mag stripes. I needed to build
some type of device that could read mag stripes. And I went out, you know, looking like I normally
do to Google, and everything I found was like 92, 93. You know, there was like one in 97.
I mean, it was all really, really old stuff. And it was all talking about mag stripe data.
And the reason mag stripes are so cool is they are the, pretty much the largest form of physical
authentication there is. You know, open up your wallet. You probably have at least three
cards that have mag stripes on them. And chances are, you don't know what's on them. In fact,
I had six. But then again, I also have lots of crazy cards. And two of them, when I actually
found a way to read them, had my social security number on them, for reasons I still don't
even understand.
Yeah. Don't most states now have the mag strip on the back of their driver's license?
On the back of the license, they have all sorts of stuff. In fact, before the show, you and
I were talking about barcodes. A lot of driver's licenses also have kind of funny-looking barcodes
that look like just a lot of dots on the back as well. And you'll find all sorts of information
on these things. And so it's more of a curiosity of what's on these, and why hasn't anyone done
anything in six years?
Exactly.
The big problem I had was the software that had been written was horribly documented. I
only was able to find source code for like two people's executables. And the executables
and the source code wouldn't even run on a modern operating system. They were all designed
for DOS and 3.1.
Yikes.
So, uh...
Well, all right. Before we go into the software part of it, let's back up a little bit to
the hardware part of it.
All right.
Obviously, it's a card that you carry around in your wallet, like we said. So let's use
the driver's license as an example.
Okay.
Do you have a driver's license?
So all a mag stripe is on your driver's license, I actually have a talk. The website I mentioned
earlier, yak.net slash assets, I've actually given a talk on mag stripes. And so I've got
some good lecture slides up there you guys can get. But all it is, literally, is some
glue and some magnetic particles. And the way the magnetic particles are arranged is
how the data is encoded on the card. And so you essentially, when you're reading a mag
card, you're just kind of reading the magnetic poles. I mean, imagine a lot of little, you
know, north-south bar magnets on the back of the card. That's what it is.
Right. And it's ons and offs. It's ones and zeros.
Exactly.
You know, it's positive, negative. And by the action of swiping them, detects those on-offs
and processes the data.
Yes. It detects the changes in the magnetic field. And there's a special type of chip called
a F2F decoder, which actually gets a bit stream out of that. It is ones and zeros, but it's
actually encoded in a particular format. It has to do with, you know, making sure you don't
accidentally override it and making sure it's, you know, redundant and has error checking.
Right.
Built into the actual physical card, meaning if I put a little cut on the mag stripe, I
don't ruin it. In fact, you'll notice physical damage to the mag stripe normally doesn't destroy
the contents because it's magnetic. It's not like, you know, you're cutting a wire or something.
All right. What if you did pass it over a big magnet?
Now, it depends on the type of card, but most likely you're going to take all those little
magnets and flip them all in the same direction. So now it doesn't have anything on it.
I know I've done that a couple of times with credit cards that, you know, like Best Buy
or whatever, when they've got the little thing to, you know, get rid of the shop listing
device or whatever. I put my credit card down on top of that a time or two and lost it.
Really?
Yeah.
I didn't think that would be so, though.
A lot of shop listing equipment is simply these, well, I mean, I'm sure you've seen them in
like CDs. They're like, they look like a little piece of paper and they have like a big wire
coiled in them.
Right. Sure. It looks almost like those RFID tags.
Yeah. It's very similar. In fact, what happens is those big like white gates, you walk through
those arm things when you go out the door. All that is is a big magnetic field. And when
you pass like a wire through it, they can detect a change in the magnetic field and know
that you're passing something through. And so like when you check out, they, this is
very simplified, but basically just demagnetize it so you don't have to worry about that.
Right.
Oh, it'll also kill your card.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's just a stream of bits. There are actually three different, it looks like one
big track. There are actually three tracks on there that store different type of information
on each track.
Right. And you actually mentioned now, and back to the hardware, specifically, well, not
specifically with Stripe, but in general, you're interfacing, with Stripe Snoop, you're interfacing
with the game port.
Well, yeah.
And I know you pointed out.
So Stripe Snoop, so I wrote some code in this 2600. It's in VB because the demo I did was
in VB because I needed something that looked pretty and I needed it pretty quick. Stripe Snoop
is an extension of the code that was in the 2600 article. You can visit the website. It's
actually hosted at SourceForge. It's Stripe Snoop, that's S-T-R-I-P-E, S-N-O-O-P dot
SourceForge.net. And you can get all the information there about it. It includes all sorts of stuff
that the code in 2600 didn't. Like, for example, it allows you to swipe cards backwards. It has
all sorts of stuff. But basically, the way it gets the MagStrike data is it needs to read
it from a reader. And so I actually have, I describe in the 2600 article how, where you
can purchase a reader and actually connect it to the game port. And so it can read this
bit stream that's generated. Like, you swipe your card through the reader and the reader
has some magic inside, let's just say.
I go into excruciating details at all these things. I won't take up airtime with it.
But basically, what comes out of it is a stream of bits, ones and zeros, that are, is the data
on a particular track. And currently, we use the game port for that.
Right. Now, and actually, and that's kind of one of my first questions is, and actually,
this is kind of a leading question. You know where this is going to go. But the game port,
okay, in reading, in reading about this, I see, first of all, that you have the five
bolt in the ground.
Yes.
Okay, so that it's powered.
Yes.
Okay, I see that. But then on top of that, you have two other wires, two other soldered
wires there that are needed. And, but you mentioned that there's a limit on the game
port. So could you explain that? What is the limitation or the problem with the game
port?
Well, first of all, let me not tell people, don't get scared away by this. Go, oh my God,
they're talking about like mag stripes and soldering. Everything's going to suck. I
highly encourage you, go look at Stripe Snoop. It has support for readers that you don't
have to build yourself. And they're also, hopefully we'll be able to talk about it, but there are
things you can do without actually needing a hardware reader. The way the game port works
is, so like, game ports are for joysticks. And sure, you've got your fancy, like, you know,
Sidewinder, Microsoft Sidewinder joystick with like 16 buttons.
With force feedback.
The basic spec is the, that one game port would actually drive two joysticks. And each
joystick would have two buttons. So you have kind of like four button inputs. And what
Stripe Snoop does, when you wire a reader to the game port, the bit stream is essentially
wired to one, to two of the buttons. And that is how you read the data in. The program literally
sits there looping, checking the status of buttons. And when one of the buttons is pressed,
which corresponds to like the clock line, it reads in what the value on the other joystick
button is, which is the data line. It'll say, oh look, you know, I got a zero. Now I got
a one. Now I got a couple zeros. Now I got a one.
And that's that on and off we were talking about earlier?
Exactly. So you're actually, the way Stripe Snoop works, it reads as if it were reading
buttons' input from the joystick. We wire it the same way. I mean, it's a really kind
of a nice, simplistic design.
Well, that's originally, I, that's originally what it was intended for as a game port, of
course. But the simple fact is, it could be for anything, and you have found a way to
use it for something else besides games.
Yes. So.
It's actually, if anyone's ever interested in interfacing stuff to a hardware, I actually,
at that yak.net website, there's a Coke machine I built that has a Mac Stripe. And it connects
to a computer and it actually dispenses Cokes. And there are all these cool pictures there
that show.
A very sexy looking Coke machine.
Really cool ways to interface stuff to computers. That's really simple. I'm a computer scientist.
I'm not an electrical engineer, though I have taken some of those classes.
Yeah, so, it's just simply using the joystick in a way that it was, you know, they didn't
say you couldn't use it this way. I just guess nobody really thought you would.
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, look at it. You've got, you know.
And that's hacking.
It's hacking. You've got a joystick. You can get like, you know, wheels, driving wheels
for like racing games and pedals. And all those do are just complicated stuff that end up
connecting to the game port. So, it's the same thing. They're just using it in some strange
way.
Yep. Okay, so, the game port then, you are limited to how many inputs you can have.
Well, the game port has four buttons and coming off the reader, it takes two lines. There's
a clock. Whenever the clock goes high, you'll look at the data line. So, basically, you can
only have a reader that can read two tracks connected to the game port.
Right. Okay. And there are, of course, as I was saying earlier, there are three tracks
on the card. So, the game port really doesn't have enough inputs for us to use.
And that was why the leading question. So, one of the other things that you're moving
towards is, well, a couple things. But one you mentioned is keyboard, the built-in keyboard
readers that are PS2 because they're much cheaper.
Yes.
Easier to find. But they also have limitations too, isn't that correct?
Yes. So, there are, so, like I said, you know, you don't have to worry about soldering. You
can go buy one of these keyboards that has a built-in MagStripe reader. These are normally
from point-of-sale devices. Sometimes they'll have a barcode reader attached to them too.
You can get them off eBay really cheap. There's a big manufacturer in Germany of them. It's
called Cherry Keyboards. Just type Cherry Keyboards into eBay and you'll find lots of them.
And they go for about $15 plus shipping. The problem with these is that you don't really
get that raw bit stream, which Stripe Snoop is then able to do lots of cool stuff with,
which I can talk about soon. It actually decodes it all in the keyboard for you and then spits
it out into whatever program you're using as if you typed in the keys. So, you'll see like
the account number and everything. You won't actually see a stream of ones and zeros using Cherry
Keyboards. Also, you know, game ports and Cherry Keyboards, those don't work with Macs
or Suns or anything else. They only work with x86 architecture, you know, PCs.
So, then the next extension of that, and we still have plenty of time, by the way, so don't
worry. The next extension of that is USB.
There you go.
USB devices, I'm sure you guys all saw it in Slashdot like last year. There was the whole
USB Christmas tree and USB menorah where you can buy chipsets that, for USB, very cheaply,
about $8, that will allow you to pretty much take any existing circuit and connect it to
the USB device. USB is really good for a lot of reasons. One, we can pretty much have as
many inputs as we want. USB, of course, is serial. It's not parallel. It's, you know,
just four wires.
Right.
But I can have pretty much any number of inputs into it. And what the little chipset does is
kind of take all of these inputs and bundle it into a package or into a packet, just like
an Internet packet. You know, hey, send me this website. And it, you know, Internet Explorer,
you know, bundles up a little packet and sends it off. The same thing with Stripe Snoop when I
use the USB interface. It'll be, oh, here, swipe a card. Okay. You know, let me take these
three different tracks, bundle them up into one packet and send it. Another kind of downside
to the game port is that to use it, you have to directly read from the game port. And directly
reading from ports without getting too technical is very bad. It worked kind of in the early days
of DOS because there was only one person using the computer. But imagine if there were like
10 people connected to a Linux system or a Windows 2000 system and all of them are reading or
trying to read and write directly to the printer port. It doesn't really work. Windows 2000 and
Linux, they have all these abstractions. So, you know, your request to print goes into like
a job queue. And then there's some low level kernel process, which actually, you know,
takes your job and prints it. Right.
You don't get to access the hardware directly. You need to do it for Stripe Snoop. So that
kind of runs into some problems. For example, in Linux systems, you actually have to run the
program as root to be able to directly access the ports. With Windows 2000, there's a simple
little DLL that's included in the distribution. And again, all of this is at the SourceForge
website. I have pre-compiled binaries for both Windows 2000, Windows 98, DOS, Linux, as well
as the source.
Great. Now, that actually leads me to another, maybe this is a silly question, but why, obviously
I haven't read all the specs and the details of the specs. What I've learned about this
is mostly from your documentation and stuff. Why track two? Why is track two the one with
the information on it? Or is there information on the other tracks as well? Or is it just
part of the standard that was developed, part of the specs that were originally said that
all data should go on track two? Or is that just...
It's interesting. Track two... Well, okay, so you have three tracks. You have track one,
track two, and track three. Track three was kind of this bastardized later concept that
actually is a track for reading and writing. It was originally used for when ATMs were not
connected online all the time. And so if you went and withdrew money from your account and
that ATM wasn't connected online, it would actually write to the third track, oh, they
took out $200. And when you would get to the next ATM that maybe was connected, it would
reconcile all the transactions that had been stored on your card. Well, this was a very
stupid idea.
Yeah, that's potentially... Wow.
Yes. Well, you have to understand it was also the 70s and no one had this type of equipment
really to read, let alone write magstripes. It wasn't very easily available. Right.
But still, it was a bad idea. Yeah, absolutely.
So track three is kind of strange. Track one and track two are both read-only tracks. Now,
of course, there are magstripe writers which will write all three tracks for you. But track
three was designed to be written using very cheap, very low-power equipment. So track one
is, and track two, were both pretty much kind of developed by the banking industry and the
airline industry. You have to understand, 60s, 70s, who were the big people that were doing
lots of transactions? The airline industry was looking for a better way to get people on
and off planes using baggage, your little tickets. And the credit card companies and the debit
and the banks, they were looking for some type of electronic payment options. So track
two is what is called... Both of them are called the ABA standard, which is for America's Bankers
Association. And they actually have two different character sets. Track two only contains numeric
data. It'll have your account number if it's a Visa card. It will have the expiration date.
It actually has half of your encrypted PIN. It's got this crazy formula for doing stuff
so that if you change your PIN, you don't need to be issued a new card. But you can actually
get someone's PIN from the information on a track. It just takes a very long time to the
point that it's not really a good idea. Track one is alphanumeric. So like Stack, you go to
restaurants, right? No.
You don't go to restaurants. You don't go to restaurants. All right, fine. I go to restaurants.
Well, like if you're at a restaurant and you give the waitress your credit card, they come
back and give you a receipt and it already has your name printed on it for you to sign.
Right. Well, they didn't type... The waitress didn't sit there and type your name in off
the card. She didn't. And also, that wasn't sent back to them when they submitted to the
credit card company. It's actually stored on your first track, track one. Okay. And that's
actually, you know, I was going to... That was the next thing I was going to lead into
is I kind of had this... You know, and I think a lot of people have this concept that there's
a bunch of information on that card, not just the number and a PIN and an expiration date
numerics. There is... Track two is numeric, but track one and actually track three are alphanumeric.
They have your name, the name as it appears on the credit card. They also have the account
information and other stuff. Track twos are pretty much the most standard because since
it's just numeric, the circuitry required to decode it and interpret it and display, it's
just a lot simpler. And for example, if you've got a... We were talking about Kroger and it's
sucking... Kroger's a grocery store and they have something called the Kroger Plus card,
which is essentially here's, you know, some information and Kroger gets to keep, you know,
tabs on my buying habits and use that for market research and I get a 10% discount or whatever.
Yeah. We had actually a whole episode dedicated to those damn cards.
Really? Okay.
Yeah.
So there's no reason for them to have your name on there.
Right.
They simply just need some type of unique number and they can look up your name in the database
later on. Or I'm sure privacy advocates are like, you're not allowed to associate these
buying habits with a specific name.
Right.
So those types of cards, I mean, and for the majority of people, they don't need to have
alphanumerics. They only need just numerics. So they use track two because it's nice, it's
simple, it stores up to 40 characters as opposed to like track one, which can do over a hundred.
It's just, you know, it's nice and simple. And so that is pretty much the most commonly
used track.
Okay. But there is, is it a full ASCII set available on track one?
It's not a full. I've got a good deal of information and actually in the, you know, the bibliography
of my article, I have some links to some really good articles that explain more about it.
Um, the character set for track one is a, I want to say it's a seven bit character set
or a six bit. It's, it's seven bits, but one of the bits is a parody bit. So it only
has 64 characters and it's like uppercase letters and, um, numbers and there are some
control characters.
And again, there's probably an RFC that defines all those.
There actually isn't an RFC. It's actually a, uh, ISO, uh, which is the Air National Standard
organization. Uh, people probably hear ISOs and they think CD images. Well, they're called
ISOs because there's an ISO called ISO. I think it's nine, six, six, zero, which defines
CDs. Well, there's an ISO that I think it's in the 7,000 that defines banking cards. It
tells you, you know, how many millimeters from the edge of the card, the magnetic stripe
needs to be, how many bits it can hold and what the character set is.
Right. Um, all this information is readily available. Um, and as well as it has built
in things like parody bits to make sure that, you know, the characters are correct. Um, track
two only has, um, it's five bits, which you think would give you 32 characters because
two to the five is 32.
Right.
But one of those bits for each character is a parody. So you actually have two to the
four, which is only 16. So that's why it's alphanumeric. You've got, you know, zero through
nine and a couple of control characters.
Right.
Um, that, that, um, so these mag stripes, they, they appear as a bit stream and the
reader, you swipe it and out of the reader comes a bit stream. And then Strape Snoop takes
this bit stream in and attempts to, to, um, find these character sets. They will find out
whether the card is valid, you know, whether there are errors in it. It will attempt to,
you know, correct the errors and it will try to decode them using these two different character
sets, uh, to figure out what the data is.
Right.
So, um, these, they're, you know, so that, yeah, so it finds the start bit and stop it
and everything in between. It decodes using the chart that actually is in your article.
Article.
Yeah. It's right there. If you wanted to do it visually, but of course the program automates
that process.
Exactly. Um, Stripe Snoop has lots of different modes. Um, Stripe Snoop, as I was trying to
say earlier, it's not just for people who want to, um, you know, buy a reader. Um, it's useful
for, um, it's useful for people who don't have readers at all. Uh, it's, it's goal is to kind
of be a suite of applications, um, to capture, analyze, and modify MagStripe data. And the,
I left the last part off. The last part is right back. And the future of Stripe Snoop,
after I get it to USB so more people can use it, is getting it to work with some of these
commercial readers out there or actually developing my own, uh, excuse me, commercial writers and
actually developing my own writer. I mean, you can go buy, you know, um, readers, but
you're going to pay like 70 or 80 bucks. You can use the plans that are in 2600 or at the
website and you're going to pay about 35. You can use one of these Cherry keyboards, um,
and pay about 15, but because Cherry does like all that decoding and tries to find errors
and things like that on the keyboard, it's, Stripe Snoop's not as useful. There are certain
options with Stripe Snoop where you can say, you know, hey, force using this character set. I
don't care if, you know, the errors, you know, say that it doesn't work or, you know, half the
characters are incorrect. Go ahead, force it. Let me see. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do
for cards that aren't, that don't follow the standards. But if you swipe one of those non-standard
cards, like in a Cherry keyboard, Cherry keyboard's going to give you an error and not display anything
at all. It'll say, oh, this isn't a real MagStripe. Right. I think you and I had a conversation
when we were in New York, uh, the Metro cards, those aren't standard, uh, tracks.
Yeah. That's, that's a good point. Um, and actually that's a good segue into why I wanted
to make sure we touched on this part of it, which I thought was cool too. And the simple
fact that, yeah, I still have my Metro card and you were saying that you're basically,
you have a, uh, kind of a small database that's growing as you start keeping a database of cards
and card structures and bit streams to use the proper terminology.
I'm so glad you brought this up.
So see, I have a, I have a pattern. I have a segue to move into this. Some, I mean,
obviously nobody's going to send you their Visa cards or even, you know, mail you a whole
bunch of cards. You know, that's just not, you know, it's not realistic, but you have
incorporated a way into the software that people can participate and give back information
and help build this database in a different way. So there you go.
Exactly. Let me, let me tell the, uh, the listeners, uh, exactly what we're talking
about. So Stripe Snoop, once it takes in this bitstream from the reader, you know, and once
it decodes it, you know, using either alphanumeric or just numeric, depending on which track it
is, once it actually gets the data, it displays it. It says, here are the contents of your card.
And normally it's a big long string of numbers. Um, equals are used as, uh, to break up the
different fields. I mean, this is just, here is a raw dump of what is on your card, but
then, and this is what makes Stripe Snoop really cool. It has a database because there
are certain formats that are standard. For example, Visa cards, Visa cards always have
16 digit account numbers or 13, but those are kind of rare, 16 digit account numbers.
They always start with four. They always have an equal sign after 16 characters. The next
four characters are an expiration date. The three characters after that are always one
zero one. ATM cards have kind of the same format. They have a certain account number, then a
break, then the expiration date, and then they have one, two, one. So there are these standards
that exist. And so Stripe Snoop will take, once it, you know, decrypts the data and shows
you what's on the card, it'll say, hmm, not only here are the contents of the card, but this
is a Visa card. And here it is. There's actually all these tables. It will say, here is the
issuing bank. This was issued by Chase Manhattan Bank, because the first four digits of the Visa
card actually tell you which bank issued it. If it's a MasterCard, it'll do the same thing.
It'll tell you this was issued by this bank. It'll tell you the expiration date. It'll tell
you all sorts of information.
But not only that, school IDs, right now, excuse me, it only does Georgia Tech's ID,
because that's what I have. But you swipe it, and it'll say, oh, this is, you know, a Georgia
Tech buzz card. Here is your student number. Here is your social security number. And here
is, you know, your index into the database. So it'll not only tell you the content of the
card, but try to give meaning to the card. So you're not sitting there going, what the hell
does that mean?
Right. Well, and you know, like, what jumped into my head is DiscoverCard always begins
with a 6011.
Exactly.
You know, there are certain codes that are assigned to the banks, and you can decode. And
obviously, the larger database that you can build on them, the more you're going to be
able to determine what kind of card it is, et cetera.
Exactly. Now, it's not only financial cards. Like, right now, there's support in there for,
there's a local radio station in Atlanta called 99X. And they have these little, like,
freeloader cards, which give you, like, special offers or whatever. They have a mag stripe
on them. Why? I don't know. I've never had to use the mag stripe. But encoded in it is,
you know, this particular serial number. So it'll just, it has a certain prefix. And
so, you know, even though the card doesn't really have anything interesting on it, it'll
still tell you, oh, this is a 99X card. So it goes beyond simple financial cards. There's
a, it supports right now American Auto Association. I know I always get that wrong. Whatever
triple A stands for. Triple A cards. You know, it decodes the contents of them. Tells you
when they were issued and when they expire. Tells you all sorts of cool information. And
you touched on earlier how to trade information back and forth.
Right.
Stripe Snoop has the ability for you to generate what's called raw mode. You swipe the card and
Stripe Snoop doesn't attempt to either get the character set or interpret the results. It simply
just dumps out the raw ones and zeros of the card. And then you can send that across
the internet to someone else. And there's an input mode where instead of reading from
the reader, Stripe Snoop will take in a file containing ones and zeros. So, you know, I
can be like, hey, Stank, you know, I think I figured out, you know, this really cool Metro
card. Here, let me send this to you. Stank doesn't have a reader, but I do. So I can
swipe it, capture this raw bit stream, send it to him, and he can use it as if he had
the card and a reader there with him, which is really the cool thing.
And vice versa, I can in turn send cards. Like, for example, you have this strange one
for your radio station. Wherever other people live, they're probably going to have their
own unique and strange cards as well. Different university cards. I mean, your database, I'm
actually, I probably shouldn't be certain of this, but I'm pretty certain you probably don't
have something from like Florida State or University of Miami. And this is a way that
people could, yeah, this is a way people could participate in this project. Because
again, this is an open source, SourceForge project. And I assume you want all the help
you can get. I do. All the feedback and all the input that you want on something like this.
The great thing is, is all it takes is curiosity. I don't care if you know how to code C.
It doesn't matter. If you're interested in man-stripe cards, you can go get Stripe Snoop.
I actually, even without a reader, all the, version 1.3 is the newest version with Stripe
Snoop. Version 1.4 is probably going to come out in the next week. And it's going to add
support for reading multiple tracks at the same time, all sorts of features. But each,
everything from 1.3 on contains files that are bitstreams, sample bitstreams. I have one
from a Georgia Tech ID. I have one from a Visa card. I have sample bitstreams. So as soon
as you download the program, you already can start using Stripe Snoop and go, hey, cool,
here's a bitstream. Let me see what's inside of it. Not only that, but Stripe Snoop also comes with
a couple of tools, some utilities. And this gets back to why I called it a suite of utilities. It
contains a couple of utilities, one called Mod 10, which allows you to change account numbers,
but still have them be valid. Certain credit cards and certain account numbers for a variety
of things, they use an algorithm that tells you what the last number should be called a
check digit. And there's, you know, it adds them all up and like divides by 10 and the remainder
has to be zero or something along those lines. So there's a, there are a lot of utilities that
let you take MagStripes either, you know, in bitstream form or whatever and modify them.
So, Stank, let's say you're a student at, you know, FSU.
Right.
I don't know if you like FSU or not or whatever.
I couldn't care less, but sure, I'll go with it.
You swipe a card and you see the content. You're like, holy crap, this is cool. And you
see it display the content, but it, Stripe Snoop then says, well, this card isn't in the
database. And you're like, well, I want to help ask this out. So you go ahead and you,
you use raw mode and you can generate a bitstream of it. But the problem is, is that, you know,
it happens to contain your social security number and you don't want to send me your
social security number, but you still want me to have an idea that this is what the bitstream
looks like. So you can actually use tools that come with Stripe Snoop and modify it and give
me a social security number. That's not a real social security number, but for all intensive
purposes and the way I calculate it and things like that, it appears to be one. And then just
send me a little note, you know, there's a social security number in this one that's
not valid. And that way I can include it into the database because the way the database works
is when you actually see the raw content of the card, Stripe Snoop starts doing all these
tests. It's like, hmm, how many different fields, how many different tracks are on this
card? Okay. So on track two, how many different fields are there? You know, in a Visa card, there
are always two fields. There's one that has the account number and one that has everything
else, like the expiration date and things like that. And then I'll say, okay, well, how long
is each one of these? And I'll be like, okay, is this one a social security number or is it
not a social security number? It has all these tests. And if some data Stripe Snoop gets passes
a certain number of tests, it can kind of, you know, pigeonhole it as a certain type of card.
So the thing I really want to try to stress to people is you can be involved with this project.
All it takes is curiosity. You know, even right from the download, even if you don't know
anybody else who has Stripe Snoop, you can start, you know, creating new cards with it,
you know, modify. You can do all sorts of stuff.
Yeah. And I'm glad as we kind of wrap this topic up as we're running out here, that was
the last thing I wanted to mention was, of course, the ability for people to participate.
And at the same time, you said it before I could even ask you, was protecting their privacy.
Obviously, people aren't going to be able to send you their, you know, personal information
and stuff like that. You know, people aren't going to send you their entire visa card number
or things like that. But other cards are also just as interesting. And at the same time,
just to kind of throw this out there and please correct me if this is inappropriate of me,
but I'm also looking ahead at, for example, this is fine and great that you can take out
the social security number before you send it back to you.
But the future that I see of this is, I, you know, again, if you believe strongly in
privacy, you have the potential ability in the future with the writer to take your social
security number out of something if you're not comfortable with it. And of course, I'm
not telling people or anything, but the ability will be in your hands or just to make you laugh,
if you were to buy a bum phone card from Kroger that was expired and you didn't have to drive
back up there. I could modify any, I could modify the expiration date.
Theoretically, absolutely. That's what I'm driving at. Of course, you know, theoretically,
I'm saying. Exactly. So yeah, that's, I'm glad you, that's exactly what I wanted to end. And if
there's anything else you, that we didn't cover that you wanted to talk about, by all means,
we've got a few minutes here. Certainly. The, the things I really want to try to stress
is Stripes Nukes open. The more people use it, the better. I've already, I'm currently the
only developer on it, though. I have had people send me code submissions and the CVS tree.
And I, if you don't know what CVS is, you don't know how to use it. I mean, hey, email
me. I'm a really nice guy. I'll pretty much tell you anything you want to know. Don't
send me emails and delete, though. I'll probably delete those. In fact, I should just have a
filter and, you know, evolution or whatever that tosses those for me.
Actually, I downloaded the source and I was looking through it myself, which again, back to
earlier, we were talking about, it's well-documented code. I saw you had comments that explained
every step along the way.
As heavily commented as the code in 2600 is, Stripes Snoop is just as commented. It's nice.
It's not VV. It's C.
Right. I was going to say, and it's C, which is even better to me.
Yeah. It's certainly a lot more portable than Visual Basic. The key I really want to hit there
is the future of Stripes Snoop. I mean, right now, it seems the project is kind of in its infimacy,
or its infancy. It doesn't really have many cards in the database right now. It doesn't
support really too many types of commercial readers. Pretty much, you have to build your
own reader. You know, I wanted to try to get more into that. You know, it's on the website.
It has to do with being able to have access to the raw bitstream as opposed to, you know,
Cherry Keyboard decoding it for you. The future is certainly USB, so I can have, you know,
all three tracks being written and read at once. So the Mac users and, you know, Sun,
you know, you guys can use it too. It's certainly, and the next step is a writer.
Because if we already have the ability to capture and we have the ability to not only decode
but modify, the next step is writing it back. And so that is something I'm really looking forward
to. And so anyone who wants to join, you know, email me, acidus at yak.net. I'd love to hear
from you.
And again, just to say it again, stripesnoop, all one word, .sourceforge.net, right?
Yes.
For all this information and more.
Yes.
You know, not only is the code documented, you've got the FAC up there. There's a lot of
explanations.
I've got videos.
Oh.
Schematics.
Oh, my God. Stank, we should have talked about the videos. There are videos made really,
really cheesily with the screen capture utility. But there are three videos up there of me
actually using Stripe Snoop and outlying all the features of it. So, you know, watch those
if you're even remotely interested. It'll hopefully hook you.
Yeah. Yeah. They were very, very good. Very well done. They hooked me.
And I guess that's going to, we'll close it up for this episode. We're pretty, pretty
full. We've got just a few minutes to wrap it up. Now, well, before we do, have you ever
seen anything like really, really unusual that blew your mind on a card, even whether
it's track one, track two, or whatever, other than, you know, seeing your social is kind
of disturbing. Have you ever seen anything else weird or unusual?
Yes. On one card, which I'm actually kind of, you know, having a little dispute with that
company right now over, over my sheer shock at finding this, I found my social security
number on track two, and I found my mother's and father's name on track one.
Oh, not cool.
What the hell is this? And it's like, there's no reason for this to be here.
That is so not cool.
So I'm having, you know, words.
Not mother's maiden name, I hope.
No, not mother's maiden.
Okay. Woo.
It was, you know, mother's first name, father's first name, last name. And I'm
thinking, why do they have this?
Yeah, that is not cool.
Why do they have it? But why is it on the card?
Yeah, that's scary.
So, yeah, it's wild what you'd find.
Hey, you know, we shouldn't be surprised at what they're watching and what they're
tracking. I mean, people think they...
Well, to pimp real quick, my homepage, which is the most significant bit, it's www.dac.net
slash acidus. You know, I've got stuff on there about XM Radio, about, you know, ATMs,
MagStripes, you know, SpectreSoft. I mean, there's all sorts of crazy stuff there.
Yeah, all your presentations are there as well.
Yes, presentations. Actually, fortunately, due to some lawsuits, some of them aren't there.
We won't go there.
There's a good number, so, you know, it's good.
Most of the presentations.
Yeah, and actually, that's a good segue. I mean, shout-outs. Go ahead. Why don't you
go ahead and start with shout-outs if there's anybody you want to say hey?
Well, there have been... I'm a big fan of the memestreams.net crowd. Hopefully, Stank
will have them on. It's a real great site for sharing and discussing news topics. Everybody
in SC2600 that I deal with, the guys that put on the conferences.
It's a great group of people. It's all about learning. They've got mailing lists, so check
out SC2600.org and memestreams.net. That's M-E-M-E-S-T-R-E-A-M-S.net.
Yeah, and we are going to try to get them on the show. We're just going to try to work
out the timing because, again, we know everybody's working and school and finals and all that
stuff. So, yeah, we're definitely going to try to get them on. And I second that shout
to SC2600 because I met you as well as some of the other guys from SC2600. And what I thought
was really cool was the way you guys did work together and you all knew each other and you
all participated and helped each other out. I thought that was really cool and something
I wish I saw more of. Strength in numbers. Yeah, and actually, I guess I'm technically
in the southeast. You are. You know, I'm down here in South Florida. You know, our 2600
group, I need to hook up and get us on the list there. It's not, you know, we're all southeast.
I would love to join up and, you know, like you said, strength in numbers, join forces.
Actually, the guys that founded Memestreams actually founded SC2600. And for those that don't
know, it's essentially just a regional hub and all these local cities have, you know, subdomains
like 404.SE2600.org. And so it's kind of, you know, there's a mailing list so everyone
in the region can kind of discuss. So, you know, getting outside just your city.
And one other shout out for me as we're really running short to Mobile Digit, who put up a
really cool archive of not only Binary Revolution Radio, but several other great shows, digital-universe.net.
So shouts to Mobile Digit for that. Very cool of him. Again, email. Any feedback?
To us, to radio at BinRev.com. Article submissions for BinRev 2.2 are ongoing. We're actually getting
some pretty good stuff. It's going to be a good issue so far. It's shaping up really
well. If you have an article submission for that, send it to articles at BinRev.com.
And tonight's closing music, it's the first time I've ever had MC Chris as our closing music,
a track called Fet's Vet. In the past, I just wasn't sure if it was safe to put him on, but
he has released these to the public. It's a free album you can download from his site,
MCChris.com. So we're going to download with Fet's Vet, which is a great song. My second
favorite song of his behind Geek. And that's going to do it. So, Acidus, thank you so much
for being on the show.
Hey, thanks for having me.
And actually, you were a very fun co-host. You had a lot of stuff to add to it. I want
to get you on more regularly. We're definitely going to talk about your other projects sometime
coming soon.
Excellent.
But I'd like to have you on here just occasionally, just for the hell of it, just a general stuff.
I would totally be down with that.
So, yeah, as long as you're, you know, I know your school thing. We'll work out some
time. We'll start getting you on here more often. So it's really great. I appreciate
you doing it with me. And we're going to wrap the show up. And we do it the same way every
week. And we tell everybody, of course, that we will see them next week. Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
Who's in what's that spot in my DeLorean? Wars over on my pizza, my DeLorean. Historian
stuff. Star Wars, historians, deep in debate, but they play at Ben again.
Rhyme renegade. Showed up, penetrate. First and second offense. I won't hesitate. Got
a job of doing darts, the guy with delegates. Got something I guess. Can't walk with someone
he really hates. I don't give a fuck. I'm after solo for all I carry. Could be behind
at Yoda's dojo. Gotta make that money, credit's no good. When a job is running shop in your
neighborhood. Think you can cook. I got a grappling hook. Let's make this quick, cause
I'm really booked. I'm a devious, degenerate, defender of the devil. Shook on all the trash
compactors on the detention level. My backpack, got chips. Well, I'm Boba of the fat. Well,
I bounty hunt for a job. I hunt to find in my bed. Well, I chill in deep space. I'm mad,
gets over my face. Well, I deliver the pride, but I'm still there on my eyes. Took my time,
I don't like to waste it down. I'm a question right inside Enigma. Get inside a slave button,
find your home and signal. Commander on the heart, Ripley to Spock. I'll find what you want,
but there's gotta be a car. Say my name is Boba Fett. I know my shit is tight. Start
acting right. Yo, fuzz on the carbonite. Got telescopic sight. Flamethrowers on my wrist. You
still don't get the gist. Fight, kiss and made the kick. Talk, kiss and made the hit. You
think I give a shit? Your mama is a bitch. I see you in a starlight pit. You just lit my
switch. Integrity's been dead. You scratch it on my itch. You know I shoot again. I got
the Venus, second Tealers, where to lick my lusty lips. So I'll let you get back inside your
little spaceship. Give you a head start, cause I'm a sporting con. Consider the starting line,
a stinky smile. Hide inside. Hope you have hyperdrive. Pay to stay alive. Don't try to
slip me five, cause I never take a bribe. To the beat of a different drummer. Bet it's
funny how to let no man put us under or else he be put under. As in six feet, got an imperial
fleet backing me up. Gonna blow up any attempt to defeat. They got a dead stock. I put payments
on my car. Handed over to Hammerhead. At most I see bar. I used to carjack and heat the bar
pack. Just go to show how you can get back on the right track. And for me, that's not an option.
Can't say that with more clarity. Me going legit would be like Jar Jar Jar once we'd stare at you.
My backpack, got jets. Well, I'm Boba, the fat. Well, I bounty hunt for a Java hut to find
in my bed. Well, I chill in deep space. I'm mad cause no for my face. Well, I deliver the
pride, but I'm still there on my eyes. Took my time out of like two ways. Kick, kick, kick.
It's open like a tom-tom. Faster than an autobot. Oh, I'm all about to try and do the deed.
I'm living gone. Java has to hit the fit. Contact a ripien. Overcoat the plan. I'm photopolitic.
It's legit. Back in the day when I was a slave. Living life in a van slain. Like in a pod race.
Mean, straight, tweaked. I became a basket case. So the space ain't from that place.
Posted. Took stuff a noble cause. Called a cruel watch. Lifestyle all about girls and cars.
Gettin' fucked up and fucked up. See, I'm not a retard. Or get like the barge.
I'm large and uncharged with a face so scarred. A cold black cock that's been torn apart.
The Sith wish that they had a dick so hard. Cause it's long, long ago when I pussy far, far.
Call me master. Cause I'm faster to pry on fire. I no longer have to hotwire.
I'm a hunter for hire with no plans to retire. And all the sucker MCs can't call me star.
My backpack's got jets. Well, I'm Boba, the best. Well, I found a hunt for Java Heights.
To finance my building.