You may have heard about it on your local TV news last night. I know I
did. HNN first reported this last
week, mainstream media is a little slow I guess. The Palm Pilot can
be used to steal cars. Whoopee. Any device, including Palm Pilots
and Universal TV remotes, that can learn IR codes can be used as an Auto
theft device.
The big part of the story that just about everyone missed, and HNN
mentioned this yesterday, is that the Palm Pilot can be used as a Red Box
in some countries, specifically Canada. A lot of people sent in email and
said "Hey, no way. The Palm Pilot speaker is not capable of generating
dual frequency tones." This is correct which is why this will not work in
the US. In the US the sound made by a pay phone when a coin is inserted
is a dual frequency tone. It is impossible for the speaker in the Palm Pilot
to reproduce this tone.
In Canada however, the sound a coin makes when dropping into a pay phone
is a single frequency of 2200Hz. This is something that the Palm Pilot
can definitely reproduce. A hacker in Canada has actually written a
little Basic program that runs on cBasePad, a Basic interpreter for the
Palm Pilot. This little four line ware will produce the tones you need to
fool a Canadian pay phone into thinking you have inserted a coin.
All of this is not the fault of 3Com or Palm Computing. The fault lies
with the telephone companies and auto manufacturers. If someone uses
a paper clip to pick a lock should we blame the guy who made the
paper clip or the guy who made the low security lock? Unless
you, as a consumer, demand better products all your going to get is crap.
Hack Canada - get your Basic Code here
Late Update
Chris Oakes at
Wired picks up this story
