🔅 🔍 🤡 Hackspace Neuron - a meeting place for hackers in Moscow 🐙 🧑🏼‍🤝‍🧑🏻 🤵🏾

What is a Hackspace Neuron?

Nine years ago, four people, keen on information security and technology, organized a space where they could do their favorite thing together: hack, research, develop interesting things and just hang out.

Since then, Neuron has experienced many iterations of change, relocation, and staff changes. Many interesting projects were born within its walls, which grew into adult and market-visible companies - Fairwaves , Nwave , Cubic , Objectlab , Lab3Dprint , Zdravprint , WellBell and others.

Neuron today is a place of hardware hacking, research and development in the very center of Moscow. Hackspace provides a platform with equipment and workplaces for the development of electronics, gathers the community and holds events on applied information and hardware security.

Under the cut, a tour of hackspace, projects born here, the activities that we conduct and life inside.

Hux Space Neuron Inside

For the past 7 years, we have been in the very center of Moscow, a 15-minute walk from the Kremlin on the top floor of a 1665 historic building called the Chambers of Ukraintsev (Wikipedia article) . At one time, even Pushkin looked in here. Movies are often shot here, for example, the windows of our Hackspace appear in the scene of the chase in the movie Brother 2. The

^{Hackspace Neuron occupies the entire top floor. The}

entrance is in the courtyard, you need to follow the signs to the top until you hit the acid-green wall with a bright orange battery heating.

At the entrance to the hackspace you are met by an acidic composition, a mixture of sprites from mario and minecraft. On the door there is a picture-monitor broadcasting motd (message of the day) or just funny visualizations. Hackspace members can upload their scenes there as they wish.

Previously, for passes we used ordinary cards like the EM4100, it was a big headache, because people are constantly changing, cards need to be issued / taken away, it is lost and broken, new ones need to be constantly purchased and brought into the database.

^{Reader PNR-P03E in a case printed on a 3D printer using SLS technology. It looks almost like a factory.}

Especially for our hackspace, we came up with a unique access control system. As passes we use several types of cards at the same time: Moscow Troika travel card, contactless bank cards and ApplePay / AndroidPay. ACS administration can occur through the Telegram bot or the web interface. The process of its creation is described in detail in the article Using Apple Pay and the Troika card as a pass. The companies Itrium and Parsec helped us realize our ideas - they provided equipment and ported the firmware with our logic to their reader.

Inside, the hackspace is divided into four rooms: a common room, a meeting room, a workshop and a chill workshop. We will go on a tour of all the rooms.

Event Hall

Here we hold events, workshops, lectures and parties. There are about 30 seats at tables, theater seating without tables about 40. The room is transformed for any needs, sometimes we even take out all the furniture and turn the room into a platform for testing self-propelled robots.

^{Workshop on the practical pentest of Wi-Fi networks.}

In the common room in the corner there is a kitchen and a reception desk. Here you can make tea, warm food in the microwave, or make coffee in a coffee machine. The menu has snacks and teas, and you can bring hot food with you or order from a variety of establishments in the area.

Chill workshop

The second room combines both a chill-zone and a workshop. This is the main room where the hackspace members hang out. Here, on one wall, there are mounting tables with equipment, oscilloscopes, soldering irons, tools and consumables, and on the other shelving with books, board games and a TV with consoles. Here you can relax and work at the same time.

This room is a subject of our special pride. We made all tables with equipment and racks ourselves. About the design of workbenches there is a separate article Check it out made a table. The design of the tables turned out to be very successful, it is pleasant to work behind them because of the huge weight of the tables themselves, which prevents them from wobbling at work - you can decompose small parts and not be afraid that they will fall due to shaking. Each table has a perforated toolbar fixed. On the side are a monitor and shelves for equipment, such as a soldering iron, oscilloscope, power supply, etc.

^{Workbenches with tools and appliances. Here you can solder and pick electronics.}

In the same room we hold events. Here, 25 people comfortably fit at tables and 35 in a theater layout only on chairs. On the wall there is a 60 "4K TV with which you can stream slides via Chromecast. We like this option much more than a projector because of its good definition, which is especially important for text.

^{Workshop on hacking an NFC box}

In the evening, with the help of light, the work area turns into a chillout. There are three different light sources: the main diode white light, RGB controlled lamps and incandescent lamps. With their help, you can create subdued lighting with any shade.

Our events

In hackspace, we try to hold parties that are primarily interesting to ourselves, focusing on applied security.

Hack NFC authorization system. Pentagon RFID Practice

At the workshop, participants learned to work at a low level with popular RFID protocols and test them for vulnerabilities. We phased attacked the NFC vending machine, analyzing each step in detail: selecting equipment, initial analysis and analysis of protocols, sniffing the exchange between the card and the reader, attacks on the card and reader, analyzing the data format in the memory of the card, etc.

The main object of the workshop was an NFC box - it is a vending machine with one single item inside. To open a box and pick up a prize, it must be "paid". But the box accepts only special cards of an unknown format for payment.

Before the workshop starts, all participants receive a card with a balance of ~ 100 ¥. The cost of opening a box is 750 ¥. There is no legal way to recharge a card. The only way to open the box is to crack the payment system and fake the balance on the card.

We gradually went through all the steps of the attack on an unknown NFC-system: we found out the protocol on which the card and the reader work, intercepted the traffic from the radio exchange, cracked the authentication system, studied the main vulnerabilities for popular types of cards using reverse engineering, sorted the format for storing data in the memory of the card and could change the balance to open the box.

Gigatron is a home-made microcomputer without a processor. Meeting with the creator

Walter Belgers - an information security specialist, hacker and techno-enthusiast, spoke about his hobby project, the Gigatron microcomputer.

What happens when a hacker falls into the hands of a mountain of TTL chips of the 7400 series, an oscilloscope and a soldering iron? In 1975, Steve Wozniak created the legendary Breakout game out of 44 such chips. When the MOS 6502 and Zilog Z80 were launched a year later, its Apple 1 launched a revolution in the world of microcomputers. But were these processor chips really necessary for her? After a year of development, Walter and his team created a fully functional microcomputer of 36 TTL chips, ROM, RAM, a pack of diodes, etc., but most importantly: without a microprocessor. At the event, he spoke in detail about the hardware design, software stack and technical capabilities of what happened - the Gigatron microcomputer. It was also about all the ups and downs on their way to making a kit version, fouling community attention and adding hardware and software extensions.

[Workshop] Theory and practice of the Pentest Wi-Fi networks

A two-day workshop on the intricacies of Wi-Fi networks at all levels: from theory and 802.11 protocols, to practical exercises on real equipment.

At the workshop, we examined WiFi networks at all levels: the fundamental principles of radio signal transmission, antenna theory, the device of the transceiver path and the protocol stack. We tested all the knowledge gained in practice: we deployed a test bench with real equipment from WiFi routers, access points and client devices that we tested for vulnerabilities.

[Master class] DMA attacks in practice. Exploit through direct memory access

A practical lesson on exploiting vulnerabilities of low-level access to random access memory (Direct Memory Access), where we hacked into a real computer with an encrypted file system that mimics an ATM or payment terminal.

Direct Memory Access (DMA) - a low-level mode of operation of computer devices, involving direct access to the computer's RAM. It is required for PCIe, Thunderbolt, and some other devices to work. Under normal conditions, DMA is used for faster access to memory so as not to occupy the processor.

Using a special “evil” device, an attacker can take control of the PCIe bus and gain full read and write access to the memory of a working computer, even if the system is protected from penetration by software.

Cool Boom Stories About Information Security

Tea breaks in an informal setting and a story about information security. AntonBo0oMtold cool stories from weekly pentester. The most interesting part did not get on the video :)

Projects born in our hackspace

Many projects were born within the walls of our hackspace, here are some of them

XTRX from Fairwaves

Fairwaves is a company created by the founders of the Hackspace Neuron and always exists nearby. The guys are developing equipment for telecom, GSM and LTE base stations, as well as SDR transceivers.

XTRX is a compact, high-performance SDR (Software Defined Radio) in the mPCIe form factor, developed within the walls of our hackspace. Two years ago, a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds at the CrowdSupply site was successfully completed and the finished device was already on sale.

Nwave Parking Sensor

Nwave Parking Sensor - A device for detecting available parking spaces. The sensor transmits data on free spaces to parking search applications using LPWAN (Low-power Wide-area Network) technology, the technology allows data to be transmitted over distances of up to 5 km at a speed of 50 bit / s. The built-in battery lasts for ten years without recharging.

Flipper zero

Flipper Zero is a project of pocket multitool for pentesters in the Tamagotchi form factor. There are several articles about this project on the Habré and while it is still under development. More details can be found in the article: Flipper Zero - a patsian multi-tool tamagotchi .

Smart dumbbell WellBell

The dumbbell can monitor the pulse, count the number of exercises performed and control the interactive training program on the screen using the joystick.