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The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

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Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#11

Post by ranma42 »

> they identified the dongle as a microprocessor, almost as powerful as the Rasberry Pi itself

Well, its more like an order of magnitude slower than the Pi (and with a lot less RAM as well)

> A very powerful wifi, bluetooth and RFID reader.

It's 2.4GHz, but only BLE and custom protocols (2 Mbit max, GFSK modulation). The SoC can do RFID, but you have to connect a transmitter coil to use it, which doesn't seem to be the case from the photo.

I'd guess this was just used as a remote control backup connection if LAN is not working?

Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#13

Post by jokoon »

I'm rather curious, why can't the RPi have soldered flash memory? How much would it cost to add 2, 4, or 8GB of flash memory on it? Because I would gladly pay for a Rpi with such memory if it added 10 dollars.

I'm suspecting it would require for them to make a new SOC, breaking compability?

Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#14

Post by mypastself »

Gripping! Would love to read more articles in this “genre”.

I’m wondering if there was an easy way for the attacker to encrypt or obfuscate some of these configuration files, so that defenders can’t extract settings even when physically connected to the device.

Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#15

Post by gambiting »

jokoon wrote: post #13

I'm rather curious, why can't the RPi have soldered flash memory? How much would it cost to add 2, 4, or 8GB of flash memory on it? Because I would gladly pay for a Rpi with such memory if it added 10 dollars. I'm suspecting it would require for them to make a new SOC, breaking compability?

>>Because I would gladly pay for a Rpi with such memory if it added 10 dollars.

That's the problem with the entire RPi ecosystem - there's a lot of things people want "even if it only adds another few dollars". Another ethernet, proper m.2 port, better audio, so-dimm slot etc etc etc....

The Rpi is meant to be cheap. Yes it means that it might not include the feature that you want. And no, "just making it a little bit more expensive" is not the solution here. It's already gotten way too expensive for what is was meant to be originally.

And if you really want a Pi with built in flash, then the compute module has that:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/compute-module-4/?varia...

Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#16

Post by gambiting »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #12
JKCalhoun wrote: post #2

So, not just a Pi-Hole as I immediately first assumed.

now i guess a smaller pi zero can do this with a much smaller footprint

Pi Zero doesn't have an ethernet port, so you have the size of the pi+ethernet adapter then.

Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#17

Post by mschuster91 »

I do wonder when the first "smart SFP" with embedded wi-fi appears - an unlabeled RPi in a junction box raises alarms, but a SFP module that's just a bit longer than the rest? Many would rather assume on first glance that accounting bought some cheaper crap due to delivery chain issues.

(For those OOTL, see https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/smart-sfp-linux-inside - it made the rounds on Twitter and HN a couple days ago)

Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#18

Post by 8192kjshad09- »

mypastself wrote: post #14

Gripping! Would love to read more articles in this “genre”. I’m wondering if there was an easy way for the attacker to encrypt or obfuscate some of these configuration files, so that defenders can’t extract settings even when physically connected to the device.

Some malware will store the executable and all configuration encrypted on the disk and will only decrypt in memory with a key downloaded from the internet.

Ofcourse you can still defeat this if you dump the memory or reverse engineer the process to get the key yourself. Makes it a bit harder but still not impossible.

Re: The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)

#20

Post by michaelt »

jokoon wrote: post #13

I'm rather curious, why can't the RPi have soldered flash memory? How much would it cost to add 2, 4, or 8GB of flash memory on it? Because I would gladly pay for a Rpi with such memory if it added 10 dollars. I'm suspecting it would require for them to make a new SOC, breaking compability?

Using an SD card means you can reset the Pi to factory settings by swapping the card for another; and undo the reset by swapping the cards back.

This is substantially simpler for beginners than using network boot, or messing around with a bootloader via serial console.

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