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Sept 3, 2010, 1:31am

Commie Banana Republic :: Hackery :: Hardware/Software/Operating System hactivism/help :: Tutorials :: [tutorial]How to Hack Roadsigns

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Topic: [tutorial]How to Hack Roadsigns (Read 30,866 times)

Pasta Sauce
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Joined: Mar 2005
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[tutorial]How to Hack Roadsigns
« Thread Started on Jul 20, 2006, 5:38pm »

"Hacking" into these things are really easy.
I will give you a breif idea how.

I am not liable for any damage you do. This is for education purposes. I'm sure this is considered a crime somehow, probably vandilism, and these days the'll probably add two or three more charges just because the fuzz likes to make money.
Or who knows maybe they can't do anything.

Well anyways, I'm just not liable for anything.

I'll try to get pictures of the thing sometime but its hard since I don't want to be spoted and my camera doesn't like night time things. The picture above was hard to get because unless the lighting is perfect, the camera I was using will have VERY long exposure with the flash off, and with the flash on, all the reflective crap around the sign (cones and roadblock-ish stuff) gets really bright and distracts the camera (it was a digital camera obviously).

Moving on already.

Materials
Almost none.
Hands.
Sign.
Thats it.

To start, there should be a "box." on the end of the trailer.
Walk to the box.
There should be a handle on it. Turn it. If it won't budge thats either not a handle or its locked and you probably can't do this.

When I opened the one pictured above up this is what it looked like:

Code:
|.....***|
|.....LCD|
|KEY/////|
|\\\BOARD|

* = Toggle switches (sign up, sign down, power, charge battery)
... = Empty space
KEY/////
\\\BOARD = Keyboard

Note: Just so you know, the ESC key is the back button

Press the a letter on the keyboard and a light should turn on. I don't think the login matters but to be safe just type in xdot (x being whatever letter your state has there, for example, oregon's would be odot). I didn't try not typing anything. The letters don't show up so it probably doesn't matter. Hit enter, and then type in the password.

This shows how retarded odot is.
The password is the default password.
On the inside of the door panel there is a giant sticker (takes up the whole panel) with a giant spread sheet on it. I didn't bother trying to find out what that was for. But on the right side of the spreadsheet was instructions. The first instruction was to type in the password. Then it lists the default password.

Quote:

The default password is 22222222

The reason why xDOT uses the default password is because these things go all over the state.

You'll be greated by two options.

Code:
[1]Sequences
[2]Messages

Sequences allows you to change the order of the pages (messages) displayed.
Messages allows you to change the pages that are being displayed

The up and down arrow keys alow you to scroll through them.
I decided to leave page 001 and 002 alone to give xDOT a break.

When you find a page you want to edit, hit enter.
It'll ask you to enter a number between 0 and 2.
In this case I am going to edit page 5.
Type in 0 and hit enter
It'll ask you to type in a number between 1 and 9
type 5
It will now display the current page and whats on it.

Code:
*_HAPPY__*
*HOLIDAYS*
*________*

_ = blank space

You'll also see things at the bottom of the screen.
F1 - Aligns the current line to the left
F2 - Centers the current line
F3 and beyond I didn't bother to read but I'm guessing F3 is right.

The reader board itself is an 3X8 grid, which is pretty limiting.
To delete leters, hit space, as the delete key. It is also set up for type over mode.

Lets make our message this:

Code:
*SNAKES ON*
*_MOFOING_*
*__PLANE__*

_ = Space

So here we go

Code:
SNAKES<space>ON<enter>
MOFOING<F2><enter>
PLANE<F2><enter>

Hit escape, it'll ask you if you want to make the changes.
y = yes
n= no
press y

Now hit escape a couple times until you get to that menu again.

Code:
[1]Sequences
[2]Messages

This time press 1
Since I'm going from memory, and this part was the most confusing part (actually the whole thing was hard to figure out but I just got lucky), my instructions may be unclear or unaccurate.
Press 0
It should prompt you to enter which sequence
default is 8
hit enter since if you change it it won't display messages
You should have a screen where on the top it looks like this

Code:
[001] [002] [000] [000]

The system can only playback 4 messages at a time

[000] means not to display a page. Right now it shows only page 1 and 2 should play. We want to add page 5.

Hit enter to skip the first two and change the third one to 005.
It should look like this now:

Code:
[001] [002] [005] [000]

Hit escape, save changes, and hit escape a bunch of times until the overhead lamp switches off indicating you are logged out.
Close the door and turn the handle so it locks and step back and enjoy your work.

I hope to have pictures soon to make things a tad more clear.

UPTDATE: They finished construction early and removed the sign.