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Newstweek Notification Distorter
The Newstweek is a small, unobtrusive device that uses ARP spoofing to change the text displayed on selected news sites.
(Newstweek video)
We issue the 'arp' commands as forensic proof that the network layout was modified. The spoofing uses 'remote' mode and thus we sniff all remote connections that pass through the gateway (direction router -> client). After the second arp table check there is a new device in the arp table of the client, the Newstweek module. This is the device through which all traffic between router and client is passed. Note also that immediately after spoofing, the 'arp -a' command can't retrieve the hostname(s) as it could before, so we cancel and use 'arp -an' instead, hence the '?' symbols instead of the hostnames. This is expected behaviour immediately after cache modification.
(Newstweek device)
It's not an exact match, but this device may remind Philip K. Dick fans of the civic notification distorter, one of the amazing and recherche weapons from his 1965 novel The Zap Gun:
"I'll give you the poop," Febbs said, "on the Civic Notification Distorter. It's n-e but not terror. Not terminal. I mean it doesn't kill. It's in the conf class.""... that means confusion. Disorienting"
"...So the Civic Notification Distorter is launched ground-to-ground say from Newfoundland to Peking... It strikes, screwing itself within a matter of microseconds out of sight in the ground; no visible trace survives."
"And the distorter," said Febbs, "Operates from that instant on in a way for which the word 'inspired' is not excessive. It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree. In other words, copy two of the original document no longer can be superimposed on copy one. Copy three disagrees with copy two at one higher order of distortion..."
(Read more about Dick's Civic Notification Distorter)
From Newstweek via Hackaday. Also, take a look at the 160 Philip K. Dick ideas and inventions I've collected from 45 Philip K. Dick short stories and novels on Technovelgy.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/31/2011)
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