[Cryptography] Kindle as crypto hardware

Lodewijk andré de la porte l at odewijk.nl
Wed Dec 4 08:39:03 EST 2013


2013/12/4 Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam at gmail.com>

> And very unlikely that anyone has backdoored the existing stocks.
>

Doesn't it carry Linux under it's skin? Regardless, what rights does Amazon
have? Doesn't it just include "read block level data"? It has WiFi or even
3G, whose chips themselves come with exploits. I'm little aware about
exploits to specific hardware chips.

I do think you could fry the WiFi, easily input messages, and use it as a
simple textual data storage device. You can even encrypt the data behind a
solid password.

It is a tad big for what you want it to be though.

I'd also need more info about your demands. It's also important to consider
redundant storage, which will be hard with a single Kindle. Having multiple
Kindles has it's own problems, especially because it's either a lot of work
or requires Internet. And Kindles break. Someone sat on mine at some point,
and it becomes instantly useless.

And, if you write your own software, why not build your own device? Take a
Raspberry or Arduino, a simple display (a non volatile one if you like) and
~30-40 of pushbuttons for a keyboard + controls (depends on what you want
with it). The Raspberry is open source more than most others, and might've
had sufficient scrutiny to find exploits on the hardware level (probably
not). The Arduino is build on such a simplistic little chip that it can
hardly have exploits, except where it's just a bad RNG and fully timeable
input. But you expect those. It takes a little wiring together, but it
should be on the simpler side of hardware projects. Order the parts of
digikey or the like, make the printboard on https://upverter.com/, order it
off of any local manufacturer (pay extra but actually get what you asked
for), solder that stuff on.

Tips on DIY hardware or tips on DIY hardware welcome.
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