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Lifehacker: Hack Attack

Lifehacker posts tagged 'Hack Attack'

Carry Your PC on Your iPhone or iPod TouchSeptember 16

It'd be wonderfully convenient if you could take your important documents and applications with you wherever you go, but lugging a laptop with you every time you step out the door is far from convenient. That's where MokaFive's new cross-platform application called iPhone Sentinel comes in. By turning part of your iPhone or iPod touch into a portable hard drive, iPhone Sentinel and the MokaFive Player allow you to run virtual machines directly off your iPhone, so you can run anything from an entire operating system to standalone video games like Quake. Here's how it works.

The Nuts and Bolts

There's a lot of different components to MokaFive's solution, so let's break down each component to understand how it all works together.

First, MokaFive's main product is the MokaFive Player. It's a cross-platform (Windows and Mac) virtual machine software. MokaFive Player runs virtual machines named LivePCs. So the player is called MokaFive, and the individual appliances are called LivePC virtual machines.

Eight Best KeePass Plug-Ins to Master Your PasswordsSeptember 9

A good password management application makes your life easier and your identity monumentally more secure, and free application KeePass—the most popular password manager among Lifehacker readers—is the perfect place to start. We've already walked you through getting started with KeePass, so let's take a closer look at how to get the most from your password management with a few of the best KeePass tricks and plug-ins.

What You Already Know

In our first look at KeePass, we showed you how to set one master password to securely rule all of your passwords. As long as you remember your master password, the rest are always at your fingertips. We also highlighted how KeePass can auto-generate strong passwords, one of the major strengths of any pass

How to Set Up a Laptop Security SystemSeptember 2

As students flock back to the library and the rest of us head back to the coffee shop for a warm drink and free Wi-Fi, the safety and security of our laptops—and all of the important and sensitive information they hold—are of the utmost importance. Let's take a look at several free and cheap methods you can (and should) use to keep your laptop safe, secure, and out of the hands of thieves. We'll also take a look at software that tracks and even snaps pictures of the thief in the event he did get away with your precious gear. Photo by presta.

Phase One: Lock and Key

They aren't free, but an inexpensive laptop lock can do wonders for securing your laptop and deterring thieves. You can find a huge range of laptop locks on Amazon ranging from $12 to $40, and whether you know it or not almost all laptops support them. They're relatively inexpensive, and for the price they're an excellent deterrent. After all, if you were a thief scoping out two laptops—one with a lock and one without—which which would you go for?

Phase Two: Laptop Alarms and Security Cameras

You've got your laptop physically locked down, so you're off to a great start. For phase two of your laptop security system, try setting up a software-based security system and alarm. Here's how they work.

Say you get up from your seat for a minute but you want an added layer of protection on top of your laptop lock. Car alarm-like applications for your laptop let you walk away for a moment without breaking down your whole work area and packing up your laptop. The benefit of an alarm in a crowded library or coffee shop is that all eyes are on your laptop and the potential thief when it goes off. An alarm is a second phase deterrent if a potential thief still goes after your laptop despite your lock.

For Windows users, free application Laptop Alarm (original post) will sound an alarm whenever anyone unplugs the power cable, the mouse is moved or unplugged, or the laptop is shut down. It's a very simple application that could use some improvements (especially compared to the Mac alternative below), but it's not bad for what it does.

Expand Your Brain with EvernoteAugust 26

A new school year is just around the corner, but this semester you're looking for a safer way to enhance your brainpower than getting all hopped up on caffeine pills Jessie Spano-style. This year, the robust note-taking software Evernote is your answer. Let's take a look at how you can use your computer, cellphone, and digital camera in conjunction with the free, cross-platform application Evernote to remember everything for the rest of your life—or at least until the end of the semester.

Why You Should Be Using Evernote

A universal capture application is only as good as its ability to catch information no matter where you are and what you're doing. With support for accessing and adding notes from your cellphone, through any web browser, or through the desktop version, the most popular note-taking application Evernote is perhaps the closest option to a true universal capture tool available

Hack Your Wii for Homebrew Apps and DVD PlaybackAugust 19

Despite the fact that it ships with a DVD drive, for whatever godforsaken reason, the Nintendo Wii doesn't support DVD playback—until last week, that is, when a homebrew hacker released a tool that enables DVD playback on your Wii. The best part? You don't have to crack open your Wii or disturb your hardware in any way to install it. Let's take a detailed look at how to softmod your Wii with the Twilight hack to run homebrew apps. Then I'll show you how to install the Wii port of the open source media player, mplayer, to turn your Wii into a DVD (or should I say WiiVD?) player.

What You'll Need

Since we're going to be doing a softmod of your Wii (i.e., we're not modifying any hardware), you don't really need much to accomplish this hack.

• Nintendo Wii
• An FAT16-Formatted SD Memory Card (more on this below)
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess ($50)
• The Wii Brew SD Installer (Windows)
• A Windows PC with an SD card reader

NOTE: I'm doing this all on a Windows PC, but you can manually install the Twilight Hack if you don't have access to a Windows PC.

The secret sauce lies in the Twilight Princess game. Essentially, we're going to load a fake game into Twilight Princess that exploits a buffer overflow and allows you install homebrew software on your Wii.

Sound complicated? Figuring it out may have been, but the excellent Wii hackers have made exploiting the Twilight hack a cinch.

Hacking Your Wii for Homebrew

To get started, plug your SD card into your computer. It needs to be formatted as a FAT16 filesystem, so find the SD card in My Computer and format it by right-clicking, selecting Format, and setting FAT as your file system. (If you have trouble formatting your SD card this way, try out the SD Card Formatter.)

Now it's time to prepare the SD card with the Twilight Hack. If you haven't already, download the Wii Brew SD Installer. When you've got it, make sure your SD card is plugged in and run the installer. The installer is fairly self-explanatory, but I'll walk you through it.

Choose Your Install Location

This should match the location of the SD card you just formatted above.

Select the Homebrew Features and Twilight Hack

Now you need to select the packages you want to install on your SD card (and, eventually, your Wii). I'd suggest selecting the Homebrew Channel (in fact, you need to if you want this to work), the Homebrew Browser, and DVDX (you'll need this last one for DVD playback). Make sure to select the Twilight Hack that matches your region. Hit Next and the Wii SD Installer will copy all the necessary files to your SD card.

Take Note of Your Twilight Princess Disc

If you're in the U.S., your copy of Twilight Princess is one of three different versions. One of the versions of the disc requires that you use a different save slot when we load the game later on, so just take note of the text on the inner circle of the bottom of the Twilight Princess game disc. (I needed TwilightHack2, for example.)

Perform the Twilight Hack on Your Wii

By this point, your SD card is officially prepared for your Wii. Unplug it from your computer and move over to your Wii. Plug it in and power up your Wii. At this point, you'll need to erase your current Twilight Princess saved game, copy the Twilight hack to your Wii, and execute it in Twilight Princess. (If you haven't played the game and created a save slot, you should do that before proceeding.) The video below from the WiiBrew folks details exactly how to do this.

NOTE: If the installation froze after you loaded the saved game and talked to the man, chances are you need to use the other saved game.

You'll need to accept a disclaimer and go through a few other screens to finish the installation (just use the 1 button on your Wiimote to accept). When it completes, head back to the Wii menu. The glorious new Wii Homebrew Channel awaits.

Turn Your Wii into a DVD Player

Now that you've got the Homebrew Channel installed, setting up DVD support is a breeze. Fire up your the Homebrew Channel from the main Wii menu and you should see the DVDx installer and Homebrew Browser. Click on the DVDx installer and run through the prompt. Hit A to select Normal install unless you've installed a modchip in your Wii. (If you're following this guide, chances are you don't have a modchip.) You've finished the first step.

Now you need to shut off your Wii and plug the SD card back into your computer, because it's time to install mplayer, the app that will play back DVDs on your Wii. You can download it from the HackMii web site at the bottom of this post. (Mplayer appears to be available in the Homebrew Browser, but it's not the version that supports DVD playback, so make sure you download it manually.)

After you've downloaded it, copy the entire mplayer folder to the apps folder on your SD card. Now just take the SD card back to your Wii, plug it in, and run the Homebrew Channel again. This time you should see mplayer next to your other installed apps, like below.

To play back a DVD, just fire up mplayer, insert a DVD, and select the Play DVD option in the mplayer menu. You'll notice two Play DVD menu items, the second of which reads Play DVD (libdvdnav). The libdvdnav attempts to use the built-in DVD menu, while the other just plays the first title. Unfortunately libdvdnav doesn't really work correctly with the Wiimote yet, but it looks to be on its way.

It takes a few seconds for mplayer to start playing the DVD, but once it does it plays without a hitch (or at least it has in all my experience). Thanks to YouTube, here's what it looks like: