Bunnie Huang (previously) is a legendary hardware hacker, and one of his claims to fame are his annual trips to Shenzhen — China's electronics manufacturing hub — with groups of MIT students to show them how electronic production actually works in the field, both so they can design projects with that reality in mind, and so that they can get an appreciation of what's happening behind the scenes when they order parts, tool up a line, or otherwise interact with the factories — tiny and massive — of the Pearl River Delta.
Last October, Bloomberg published a blockbuster story claiming that some of the largest tech companies in the world, as well as sensitive US government and military systems, had been attacked through minute hardware implants that had been inserted at a subcontractor facility during the manufacture of servers from the world's leading server company, Supermicro.
In July 2016, Andrew "bunnie" Huang and Edward Snowden presented their research on journalist-friendly mobile surveillance resistance at the first MIT Media Lab Forbidden Research conference; a little over a year later, they have published an extensive scholarly paper laying out the problems of detecting and interdicting malware in a mobile device, and presenting a gorgeously engineered hardware overlay that can be installed in an Iphone to physically monitor the networking components and report on their activity via a screen on a slim external case.
I've been writing about genius hardware hackers Andrew "bunnie" Huang since 2003, when MIT hung him out to dry over his book explaining how he hacked the original Xbox; the book he wrote about that hack has become a significant engineering classic, and his own life has taken a thousand odd turns that we've chronicled here as he's founded companies, hacked hardware, become a China manufacturing guru, and sued the US government over the anti-hacking provisions of the DMCA.
In the first of a series of documentary videos about 'Future Cities,' WIRED UK has released a wonderful short doc on Huaqiangbei, the vast market district in Shenzhen, China.
Bunnie has a years of experience partnering with manufacturers in Shenzhen, so he knows what he's talking about. This looks like a fantastic resource for hardware entrepreneurs.
In this talk from Maker Faire New York, Bunnie Huang of Chibitronics gives an amazing run-down of the on-the-ground reality of having electronics manufactured in Shenzhen, China. It's a wild 30 minutes, covering everything from choosing a supplier to coping with squat toilets and the special horrors awaiting vegetarians in the Pearl River Delta. — Read the rest
On May 14-15, Make is hosting its second annual Hardware Innovation Workshop in San Mateo, CA. There's a pretty amazing speaker lineup, but perhaps most exciting is a "Maker Pro Master Class" with Andrew "bunnie" Huang, one of the great hardware hackers of our age.
Virtuoso hardware hacker Bunnie Huang is building an open hardware laptop. Want.
We started the design in June, and last week I got my first prototype motherboards, hot off the SMT line. It's booting linux, and I'm currently grinding through the validation of all the sub-components.
Bunnie Huang, cracker of the Xbox and creator of the Chumby, wanted to do something to help people in Japan following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. He created a reference design for a cheap, reliable, stylish Geiger counter for everyday carry, under the auspices of Safecast, a group that works on ongoing disaster relief in Japan. — Read the rest
Bunnie Huang blogs his recent Open Hardware Summit talk on the future of open hardware. Bunnie says that open hardware stands to grow from a niche in the global hardware market to an important segment, thanks to phenomena like "heirloom laptops" (and boy, isn't that a provocative coinage!?). — Read the rest
Bunnie "Chumby" Huang, whose Hacking the Xbox is a reverse-engineer's bible, has been asked to testify at the trial of Anaheim's Matthew Crippen, who faces three years in prison for jailbreaking Xbox 360s (that is, modding them so that they could run software that Microsoft hadn't authorized). — Read the rest
Bunnie Huang — best known for hacking the Xbox — has been in China lately, sourcing manufacturing suppliers for Chumby, the new soft computer appliance his startup is selling (Chumby is way cool, by the way — totally open, hackable, and a complete reimagining of how a computer can be used in your home). — Read the rest
In case you don't know, HackSpace is a terrific monthly maker magazine from the U.K. Published by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, HackSpace includes articles by bunnie huang, Andrew Lewis, Marc de Vinck, Sophy Wong, Bob Knetzger, and many other authors you many recognize from the pages of Make: magazine and other domains of the maker movement. — Read the rest
With Trump poised to exact high tariffs on goods from China, it's tempting to declare the gadget party over: everyone is going to pay through the nose for electronics, from makers to Apple, and that's the end of the story, right?
For the second year in a row, the MIT Media Lab is giving out a no-strings-attached cash award of $250,000 for "disobedience" that benefits society; the prize is a reaction to MIT's shameful historic instances of throwing disobedient researchers under the bus, from Aaron Swartz to Star Simpson to bunnie Huang.
Back in 2016, we published a good technological explainer about Intel's Management Engine, an evolution of the decade-plus old idea of "Trusted Computing," in which a separate, isolated system-on-a-chip lives alongside of your computer, performing cryptographic work and overseeing the functions of your computer.
In cryptographic and security circles, the "evil maid" problem describes a class of attacks in which a piece of unguarded hardware, is tampered with by someone who gains physical access to it: for example, a hotel chambermaid who can access your laptop while you're out of the room.
What are you currently working on? I recently saw an open-source hardware radiation detector and HDMI "hack" that's full shipping product.
