I'm a fan of Docker - especially for software development, allowing me to switch machines or operating systems and not have to spend hours re-configuring them to have the same services and configuration. There's a growing trend to use Alpine Linux for Docker containers, rather than something like Ubuntu, because it has a smaller footprint (making it faster to download and more convenient for smaller, such as solid state, drives).
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Just weeks out of warranty my Western Digital Green 2TB hard drive died. Here are some of my thoughts and findings while trying to find a new replacement drive. The Western Digital Green drives, which are supposed to be "energy efficient" and "quiet", have a bit of a poor track record. It seems the drive powers down when not in use, and spins back up when you access it (but this causes a delay).
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(If you've used the older method below - "hakchi 1" - make sure you backup your "dump" folder which should contain your original kernel files) Dumping your kernel: (this is a relatively safe step - at leat for your NES Classic - as it only reads from it) Download "hakchi2" Run hakchi2, from the menu select "Kernel" and "Dump kernel" (say "yes" when asked if you're sure, and follow the instructions it gives) Once you've held down reset and pressed the power like the instructions tell you it, it should automatically start dumping your kernel Do yourself a favour and backup the "dump" folder created in the "hakchi2" folder - this contains your original firmware which can be used later to reset/fix your NES Classic If you get a "Kernel dumped but MD5 checksum is unknown: {0} xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
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It all starts on https://holidayhackchallenge.com/2016/ - where we're shown Santa Claus's business card, told the story, and asked to solve some questions/challenges. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Cranberry Pi Board Heatsink Power Cord HDMI Cable SD Card Terminal 1 Terminal 2 Terminal 3 Terminal 4 Terminal 5 Part 4 The Mobile Analytics Server (via credentialed login access) The Dungeon Game The Debug Server The Banner Ad Server The Uncaught Exception Handler Server Answers / audiofiles Part 5
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While I'm not much a reverse engineer myself, there have been times when I've needed to poke at a MIPSEL binary - be it for a hacking challenge or just some firmware I'm looking at - and while there are tools to identify and reverse engineer these binaries on a different host architecture, sometimes it really helps to be able to run and watch the files more natively. Luckily qemu can emulate MIPSEL, and "aurel32" has put together a MIPSEL Debian image we can boot.
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For our 2016 BSides Cape Town information security conference I made an 8bit NES game as a challenge - inspired by the amazing challenge @s4gi_ put together for ZaCon 2015 (featuring Leisure Suit Larry of old "quest game" infamy) and the incredible def con challenges 1o57 comes up with (though a little more specifically his "how to build a processor in 10 minutes or less" talk I got to attend at this year's def con).
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