I spotted MAKE author Joe Grand at DEFCON and he had a really interesting project around his neck. He makes these little devices in the classes he teaches- the skills build on many electronics concepts (LEDs, resistors, etc…) then he has the students hack it and reverse engineer it. Link.

The 3rd annual lock picking contest went on at DEFCON. It’s pretty amazing to see the wide variety of tools, locks and lock pickers all in one spot and all handily dispensing of most locks in record time. Here are some photos of the lock picking in action (I was able to liberate a couple locks, but there was this young kid who schooled me and did it with his eyes closed, the show off)… Link.

I was going to write up the IR hacking talk, but Wired news online got to it before I had access so here ya go. A vulnerability in many hotel television infrared systems can allow a hacker to obtain guests’ names and their room numbers from the billing system. It can also let someone read the e-mail of guests who use web mail through the TV, putting business travelers at risk of corporate espionage. Link.

BoingBoing has the latest list of the “many, many mirrors for Mike Lynn’s controversial Black Hat presentation in which he quit his job, described critical vulnerabilities in Cisco equipment and got sued by his employer“…I’m getting slammed with emails and IMs about this, so here ya go…Link.

Phil Zimmerman showed off his “new project” a encrypted VoIP shtoom application. Right now, if you’re using VoIP, there really isn’t any real security, but soon, that might change. Here are a couple photos of the app in action. Link.