hacking a Set Top Box or two, or three… or 4!

Posted on by haquesprojects

I was browsing my local pwn shop and saw some likely candidates for hacking. They are Standard definition set top boxes designed to recieve digital TV and pump it into your Analog TV. Nothing special but for $48 for all four, it doesn’t matter too much if they aren’t hackable or if I kill them in the process.

The Units are:

I was able to hook the first one up and get some serial output. More info on each of these as I get stuck into hacking them.

Serial goodness…

Posted on by haquesprojects

I went driving around today looking for an old USB to Mobile phone cable, as They can be used alone to hookup to the router board. After an hour or two of searching, I found one, a samsung cable.

samsung

I also found another Samsung Serial cable

samsung2

and another serial cable that is strange, some kind of sim card reader or something.. If anyone knows what this is please let me know.

sam1

sam2

And to top it off, 2 more devices to hack, a modem router for a buck

dynadyn2

and something called a 3g Home Cell.. some sort of 3g booster thing… for $15

lucent

The real killer is that once I got to work, I actually had a usb-ttl hooked up to an arduino!!! Doh, oh well at least I found some interesting things.