CVS Camcorder Hacked In a Good Way

A lot of hacks consist of "I pulled this thing apart and saw that it contains a flash card." This hack, on the other hand, turns the CVS Camcorder into a USB-capable, CVS-subsidized video recording device. Any hack, however, that requires the following descriptive paragraph:

Interestingly, there seems to be a flaw in the code Pure Digital wrote. You can request the 128-byte challenge by sending a specific USB command with an index number of 0-127. But, if you send an index number between 128 and 255, you'll get back the secret response it is looking for that's needed to unlock. It looks like the firmware tried to prevent this by performing an "AND" operation with the value 0xFFFFFEFF, but that doesn't do it — a value of 0xFFFFFF7F would be needed. Or, maybe it was on purpose :-) we'll see if (or how fast) Pure Digital closes that door.

...probably won't fly in a lay-person's hands. After all, my Aunt is great at reading byte-code but she just doesn't know her hex values like she used to!

CVS One Time Use Digital Camcorder Reviewed (Verdict: One-timey)

CVS camcorder usably hacked! [Make]