3COM's Ergo Audrey Hacked

It looks like the 3COM Ergo Audrey hacking scene is finally taking off. A guy named Sowbug has hacked the 3COM Ergo Audrey to shell. He has pictures of it here(1) and here(2). Another site has opened to cover this hack, here(3). And of course the Linux Hacker messageboards are covering it quite a bit.

Audrey Discontinued

I was on a search to figure out what an Audrey even was and found a discontinued notice on 3Com's site dated March 31. They say they discontinued all of their internet appliance line due to a lack of market.

Here [3com.com] is their End of Life Statement [3com.com].

Here [3com.com] is their product page [3com.com]

Here [3com.com] is their Q and A page [3com.com] regarding the discontinuation.

After looking at the specs I doubt I would have bought one anyhow.

Audrey's for $90 at tigerdirect.com

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool s/item-details.asp?sku=m975-9000&SRCCODE=WEBE10809

Not a fake

You lazy dweebs, check the links before you distribute your ignorance to the world. I swear, /. is a colossal stupidity amplifier. As was widely reported (including here on Slashdot) Audrey ran QNX. So no, you wouldn't see any Linux in there. I was on the dev team for Audrey at 3Com, I've read the procedure described, and it would in fact work, he obtained a shell in a Photon pterm. I'm pleased to see that people will get some use out of the hardware. We put a lot of work into the thing, it was highly depressing that 3Com was/is in such financial trouble that it was terminated before we got a chance to rev software and address many of the complaints people had about the product. (I personally would like to buy all of the available inventory on Ebay and shove them one by one sideways up 3Com's inept CEO Bruce Claflin's ass, a sentiment shared by many of the company's long-suffering shareholders - but I digress). What is not widely known even within the product team was that there was an internal under-the-table project to run Linux on the Audrey almost from go. The big hang-up was getting X to run, and fit in the 16MB of flash in the Audrey. The main advantage to QNX was the availability of the Photon environment, which was a great deal lighter-weight than X with a toolkit.

Progresso Black Beans

Progresso Black Beans, eh? Yeah, someone's gonna get owned unless he takes some Pepto.

Moderate parent up.

The first thing I noticed was the beans also.

I feel the beans cast an air of suspicion over this whole thing.

Its like this guy is working on his computer but instead of drinking a Coke, he just eats a can of beans? That aint right.

That didn't take long...

www.audreyhacking.com is already slashdotted.

Maybe it's just that the name isn't that familiar, but the idea of "hacking Audrey" has a certain creepy resonance to it... thinking of the people that I know named Audrey... hmmm...

Um

Ya, but what's an Audrey? [zdnet.com]

Sounds like 3Com has learned the lesson of the I-Opener. Nothing is impossible to hack, but at least this one is hard.

hmmmm...

what's with the dec '99 dates for /bin and /tmp? he says that he purchased it on july 23rd. i think his directory creation dates look a little funny. maybe these *are* faked.

How much did sowbug harvest from the slash?

If in fact these are faked screens, which we visited, one wonders how much his sites harvested from our browsers that's sitting in his logs now?

Just send me more of that tasty spam, it goes well with the can o' beans next to the Audrey ...

Proof?

here [sowbug.com] is how he said he did it... Before we complain about borders not lining up, someone who understands this should give us a fair evaluation of his methodology

Not faked

Didn't *anybody* follow the first link? This page [sowbug.com] describes how he actually did it. The reason that it looks like it's running in an Audrey window is because IT IS. He got a shell, all right, NOT by porting Linux to Audrey, but by updating Audrey's flash so to add a QNX shell application on the flash card. He then booted the Audrey and ran the shell. That's what the screenshot is of.

Once again, not a fake.

Internet Appliances?

I've never understood the fascination with Internet Appliances. Couldn't you just use a cheap PC? It would do all the functions of an Internet Appliance, plus so much more.

Tomorrow's headlines...

"INFAMOUS HACKER SOWBUG ARRESTED BY FBI"

Tuesday, August 7 - Newswire

Today the FBI arrested the infamous hacker
"sowbug" on a criminal complaint from 3com.

The FBI alleges that "sowbug" violated the DMCA
by reverse engineering 3com's "Audrey"
device.

A company spokesperson explained : "sowbug
violated the DMCA by bypassing our elaborate
security mechanisms to prevent unauthorized
access to the operating system. ingenuity
will not be tolerated. We intend to send a message
to the dangerous hacker community that using our
products in ways 3com never considered is totally
unacceptable."

Supporters of the DMCA are calling for the death
penalty, arguing "a mere 5 years imprisonment
is not a strong enough deterrent to free thinking
and research."

ObPr0nReference

Ergo Audry? Sounds like a model you'd find at Real Doll. [realdoll.com]

Linux Rulez!

Oh my god! It doesn't look like Linux! It doesn't behave like Linux! Linux is the only OS in existance so these shots must be a fake!!!!

I don't get it.

$ man 1 here
No entry for here in section 1 of the manual
$ man 2 here
No entry for here in section 2 of the manual
$ man 3 here
No entry for here in section 3 of the manual

What's up with enumerating your links?

disco'd

A search for the audrey on the 3com site reveals that the product has been discontinued, and will no longer be supported see http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/consumer/au drey/finalfaq.pdf [3com.com] so pickem up cheap now well you can

I'm confused.

The posting didn't have links to any background material, so all I know about the Audrey is what little there is on 3Com's website.

I just have a few questions. What exactly is meant by a hack here? Are those screen shots supposed to be coming from some other Audrey that someone has hacked into? If they are taken from the console of the "hacked" system, I'm not sure what they prove. I have root access on my Dell desktop computer running Red Hat Linux 7.1, and I didn't need to do any hacking at all!

Can someone provide some links to some background material so I can understand what the Audrey is, and what this hack allows someone to do?

Audrey

OK-

I was one of the clueless ones who didn't know what the hell Audrey was. So I didn't really feel like visiting the links. But apparently it is some sort of internet appliance that 3COM made, but then discontinued. Fun Times!

Duh! Hoax! Look at the output of ls!

This is not a hack nor is it Linux. It is a hoax. This is simply Audrey running a shell inside of a QNX [qnx.com] Photon [qnx.com] window.

You can tell from the 'ls -l' command. He is in the root directory and one of the files listed is "nto". The name of the microkernel of QNX6 [qnx.com] (also called QNX Realtime Platform) is Neutrino. The "nto" file is the resource manager frontend for the microkernel.

And is it really a hack to install Linux over a cool free [qnx.com] realtime microkernel OS like QNX? Or is it just stupidity? ;-)

what is the Ergo

What are you guys talking about? who would really want to use one of those things in that situation ?? D'ho what is an Ergo???

Buy Audrey on Ebay cheap

I bought my 3COM audrey on Ebay for $150 shipped, brand new in a box. These retail for over $500 normally, but they were discountinued do to lack of demand. They areally are neat little units.

Re:Be careful folks.

Remember back in the days when we could freely modify systems on the completely undubious grounds that we owned them? Chips could be slipped into playstations, Ms. Pac Man tables could be overclocked, and freaks could weld together Wonderswans and GBA's to the amusement of the world.

From what I've seen of this trick NONE of it falls under the DMCA: no encryption/decryption involved. It can be argued, probably successfully, that getting an image of the software that runs the system is copyright violation. However, estimating the value of the code per copy at less than 100 dollars, a single copy under the non-profit copyright laws would be insufficient for jailtime. Of course, I could be remembering the statute incorrectly: it has been several months since I last looked at the law.

As for a licence... that's a civil matter. Thank goodness that so far no company has managed to convince congress that violation of a click-through or shrink-wrap agreement should result in incarceration.

Someday these companies will realize that what we want is to pay a fair price for a box that works on our terms. In the mean time, let's pay an absurdly undervalued price and hack away.

Re:Faked Screenshots

do you have any proof of this? because they look pretty real to me.

Re:Faked Screenshots

Um, read his webpage.

He doesn't say anything about even trying to run linux on it. He's managed to get QNX to give him a regular shell prompt on it, and considers that useful. QNX aint a bad OS, so, sure, that's useful.

It's too fuzzy to make out what's on that title bar, but it would be perfectly normal for the QNX gui to put a title bar on a window, wouldn't it?

Re:Faked Screenshots

Looks exactly like a QNX RTP pterm (photon term) to me...and that's what in the audrey. The top font is the default text font for all QNX windows (unless otherwise specified by the application).

The dirlist looks good too.

not to mention the fact that when he did some digging he came with QNX employees on the names of some binaries...which I know for a fact work there, since I'm also a QNX employee (and work with some of the names mentioned). The rest of the info he's put together looks pretty good as well (as in accurate).

Maybe you should check out the QNX RTP before claiming that these are faked up shots...

Re:mirror

Three words buddy: BRING-IT-ON

Re:Manipulated Screenshots

He only claims to have gotten a Korn shell on his Audrey running off of QNX . He dosen't claim to have changed the OS from QNX to Linux. http://www.sowbug.com/audrey/hack.html

Gives all the details.

Re:Faked Screenshots

That ain't Linux, that's Audrey.

check the site, he didn't install linux on it, he got a prompt on the native OS, which is QNX

Re:Faked Screenshots

I wonder if the editors "get wood" when they post worthless/outdated/previously posted crap... It seems that they do.

Re:Faked Screenshots

I doubt these are faked considering the fact that there is a directory named after the internal 3COM name of the project. :) I guess he could have worked @ QNX or 3COM and been smart enough to add that in - but I doubt it. :)

Re:Hey

Right, I *know* this is redundant but as this is the first Wrong comment to reach +3 I will explain.

He did not install linux on his machine. He is using QNX.

He has got a shell running in QNX. It is natural for an OS with a GUI to put a title bar on its windows, is it not?

He got the shell running by adding a new web-page to the CF card which holds the Audrey OS, which had a link when clicked on bought up the shell.

For the people discussing "smudges" and 0-pixel misalignments: get a life. For the people that did not read the article: get a life.

Re:Well this will discourage manufacturers...

I guess it's a good thing that Audrey runs QNX then, isn't it.

It ain't Linux

I hate to break it to you, but this thing isn't running Linux. It's running QNX RTP which is a helluvalot better than that slow bloated dung pile Linux. So please don't add insult to injury by calling it that!

Some quick notes I made from a few links and about 2 minutes of reading:

- The fact that Audrey is 'hackable' is probably 3Com's (Audrey's makers) fault and not QSSL's (QNX's makers) fault. 3Com designed and packaged the system.

- If they used BeIA, Windows CE (or whatever) using the same design, it would be equally as easy to 'hack.'

- Doing this hack requires an Audrey flash ROM image. Something that is not widely available. So, unless you have connections like this guy did, it's probably not very easy to do.

Audrey is an obsolete system discontinued by 3Com

Audrey is an Internet Appliance discontinued by 3Com
See the link:

http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/consumer/au drey/finalfaq.pdf

Discontinuance of Audrey Q&A
Q Why has 3Com decided to discontinue its Audrey product line?
A While we continue to believe in the potential of Audrey, there are ...

But some people still think it is important.

Re:Faked Screenshots

Please discontinue your posting here on ./ as it it dragging down our collective intelligence.

Please practice the following before posting again:

breathe

read

think

Now I think the cheap Audreys on ebay look pretty appealing. It could be a nice substitute for the i-opener that I never got.

Re:My shopping list

You forgot:

-Beans