Hard disk hacking (08 Aug 2013)

Back in the late 80s, I earned my living by hacking hard disk and floppy controllers. With this kind of history, I was floored by Hard disk hacking, in which Jereon aka Sprite_tm describes his reverse-engineering journey into hard disk controllers.

Jereon also held a presentation on this topic at OHM 2013. I wasn't there, so I cannot wait to see the video recording to show up on the OHM2013 web site. If, like me, you are a reverse engineer deep down in your heart, this article is a must-read for you. It shows how with a little bit of hardware tweaking, but mostly systematic and logical thinking and debugging, hard disks can be hacked so that they will present fake contents to users - which is a very troublesome thought to anyone concerned about security.

In one of those startling coincidences, just before I found Jereon's article, I had dug up old 8085 programming manuals at home. 8085 CPUs were used in the controller hardware used for Atari's SH20x and Megafile hard disks (I specialized into Atari hardware in the 80s and early 80s). My plan back then was to learn enough about 8085 assembler and architecture so that I'd be able to disassemble and reverse-engineer the controller's firmware. That project never got too far, unfortunately, and so I am really happy to see that a new generation of coders is fascinated by the same idea and, unlike me, follows through. Bravo!


Previous month: Click here.
to top


You are here: Blog > WebLeftBar > DefinePrivatePublic201308

r1.1 - 08 Aug 2013 - 07:28 - ClausBrod to top

Blog
This site
RSS

  2017: 12 - 11 - 10
  2016: 10 - 7 - 3
  2015: 11 - 10 - 9 - 4 - 1
  2014: 5
  2013: 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5
  2012: 2 - 10
  2011: 1 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 12
  2010: 11 - 10 - 9 - 4
  2009: 11 - 9 - 8 - 7 -
     6 - 5 - 4 - 3
  2008: 5 - 4 - 3 - 1
  2007: 12 - 8 - 7 - 6 -
     5 - 4 - 3 - 1
  2006: 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
  2005: 12 - 6 - 5 - 4
  2004: 12 - 11 - 10
  C++
  CoCreate Modeling
  COM & .NET
  Java
  Mac
  Lisp
  OpenSource
  Scripting
  Windows
  Stuff
Changes
Index
Search
Maintenance
Impressum
Datenschutzerklärung
Home



Jump:

Copyright © 1999-2024 by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
Ideas, requests, problems regarding TWiki? Send feedback