Trammell Hudson

On this episode of On the Metal, we interview Trammell Hudson. Trammell has some of the most interesting side projects related to every single hardware / software interface you can imagine. Join us as we step into the negative privilege rings with stories of reverse engineering lightbulbs & a Canon 5D Mark 2, hacking a Mac SE, dissecting modchips, evil maid attacks, and more.

Show Notes

You can find Trammell on Twitter at https://twitter.com/qrs, his blog at https://trmm.net/, and his GitHub at https://github.com/osresearch.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Sandia National Labs: https://www.sandia.gov/
• Intel Paragon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Paragon
• OSF/1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSF/1
• Intel i860: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860
• Intel Pentium Pro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_Pro
• Red Storm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_(computing)
• RISC architecture is going to change everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL9yCWv7NS0&feature=emb_title
• Message passing interface (MPI): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface
• System management mode (SMM): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode
• Modchips of the State: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7H3V7tkxeA
• Modchips: https://trmm.net/modchips
• Bloomberg Supermicro story: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies
• SPI flash reader: https://trmm.net/SPI_flash
• spispy flash emulator: https://github.com/osresearch/spisp https://trmm.net/Spispy
• ChromeOS firmware: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/firmware/+/e295ff701af589df9eae9f4549792700c4cbe1f3/README.md https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/custom-firmware
• Trusted Platform Module (TPM): https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/work-groups/trusted-platform-module/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
• UEFI "Chain of Trust": https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI%20Forum%20White%20Paper%20-%20Chain%20of%20Trust%20Introduction_Final.pdf
• Evil Maid Attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_maid_attack https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike_FAQ#Does_anyone_actually_use_evil-maid_attacks.3F
• TPMGenie: https://github.com/nccgroup/TPMGenie
• Google's Titan Chip: https://2018.osfc.io/uploads/talk/paper/7/gsc_copy.pdf https://trmm.net/OSFC_2018_Security_keynote
• Open Source Firmware Conference (OSFC): https://osfc.io/
• LinuxBIOS: https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4888 https://www.coreboot.org/
• LinuxBoot: https://www.linuxboot.org/
• Open Compute Project (OCP): https://www.opencompute.org/
• Bunnie's Laptop: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686
• Open Titan: https://opentitan.org/
• iCE40 FPGA: http://www.latticesemi.com/iCE40
• iCEBreaker FPGA: https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker-fpga
• Project Trellis: https://github.com/SymbiFlow/prjtrellis
• nextpnr: https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr
• yosys: https://github.com/YosysHQ/yosys
• UPduino v2.0 FPGA: https://www.tindie.com/products/tinyvision_ai/upduino-v21-low-cost-fpga-board/
• ULX3S FPGA: https://www.crowdsupply.com/radiona/ulx3s
• PiDP-11: https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11
• PiDP-8: https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-8
• Trammell's PDP-11 prject: https://trmm.net/PDP-11
• Digitized Monkey Brains (PDP-11 post): https://www.nycresistor.com/2014/05/15/pdp-11/
• Model ASR33 Teletype: https://trmm.net/Model_ASR33_Teletype
• All of Trammell's Retrocomputing posts: https://trmm.net/Category:Retrocomputing
• Baud rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baud
• Mac SE Easter Egg: https://trmm.net/Mac-SE_Easter_Egg
• Zigbee: https://trmm.net/Ikea https://zigbeealliance.org/
• Magic Lantern firmware: https://trmm.net/Magic_Lantern_firmware
• Home Assistant (Open Source): https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant
• Node-RED: https://flows.nodered.org/
• MicroPython: https://micropython.org/ https://github.com/micropython/micropython
• Mirai Webcam Vulnerability: https://www.wired.com/2016/12/botnet-broke-internet-isnt-going-away/
• Trammell's research on Bootguard: https://trmm.net/Bootguard
• Rust on the Teensy: https://branan.github.io/teensy/
• Oreboot: https://github.com/oreboot/oreboot https://osfc.io/talks/oreboot

What is On The Metal?

As a part of starting Oxide Computer Company, Bryan Cantrill and Jess Frazelle decided to also create the podcast that they always wanted. Joined frequently by their boss, Steve Tuck, Bryan and Jess interview incredible guests retelling stories of adventure at the hardware/software interface. It’s unapologetically technical and as Jess says, “the nerdiest podcast on the face of the planet” -- but if you're their kind of nerd, you'll find yourself hanging on every word!