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Infrared Infrastructure

shkspr.mobi

47 pointsColinWright17 comments

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I love the side-channel attack of using a thermal imaging camera to see the recently pushed buttons on a cold keypad.

I hate that nothing is safe anymore, but I love the creativity.

That (plus wear, probably more wear) is why some touch screen keypads randomize the numbers every time.

Unfortunately those keypads aren't ADA compliant, since blind people can't use them.

Wouldn't any touchscreen fall into that category? One with changing buttons to press?

Mitigation, such as speaking the touched button for confirmation would be troublesome.

There could be an option to set it to 'standard mode' for disabled customers.

Basically all attempts at increasing security will make it more difficult for somebody. For example, 4+ pin digits (bad memory), fingerprints (no fingers), etc, etc.

The question is, is it worth having reduced security for the very few edge cases?

The Splinter Cell games were way before their time!

Interesting to see that it works in practice.

You can fool the system by heating one of your hands under your arm and then cycling between both sets of fingers at random. The different initial temperature condition will break the assumption that each button press started with the same heat flux.

Tom Clancy loved figuring out military tech. His books are full of stuff like that.

I vaguely remember this being a technique for getting past doors in the Splinter Cell stealth games (2002).

I did something like that but with a laser pointer and its speckled pattern - https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/fun-with-speckle-patt...

So jealous. Wish I'd known that https://www.emfcamp.org/ was a thing. Definitely subscribing for the next one.

A full music video shot in infrared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS46C2z5lVE

I wonder if it is just CGI. Seems too high resolution and frame rate to be feasibly shot with microbolometer sensors.

As far as I remember these sensors still use a small physical mechanism to clear their state so they have a very distinct refresh pattern that's entirely absent from the video.

And this music video is at least 10 years old.

Edit: Looks like it was actually shot on a FLIR SC8200. Very impressive work and a nice read. [0]

> The thermal camera isn’t designed to be moved around quite the same way a film camera is. It is meant to be used while tethered to a Windows laptop over ethernet, connected to Flir’s proprietary software. The camera has no buttons; instead, the software is used to set it up and record. In essence, in this setup the computer is the brains of the camera, while the camera itself is just a sensor. This obviously wouldn’t work in the context of film production, as we couldn’t keep the computer connected to the camera at all times — especially since Adam planned to shoot the entire thing on a steadicam. We did, though, find an alternate way to use the camera. The camera offers an SDI out that is always outputting signal, and we discovered that if we set up the camera with the computer connected to the software, we could unplug the ethernet cable and the settings would stick. We used a Sound Devices PIX 240 ProRes recorder to capture the signal and shot to that.

[0] - https://medium.com/@irvingharvey/metering-with-heat-shooting...

If anyone else was wondering how you can deep fry Buckfast Tonic Wine... it's basically Buckfast flavoured churros (with Irn Bru sauce).

https://www.scottishconsulate.org/recipes/deep-fried_buckfas...

I have a CAT S60 smartphone that includes a FLIR camera. It's definitely a useful tool to have.

I don't get it, is it just a few photos from a thermal camera or am I missing something ?

It’s COOL

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