Monthly Archives: August 2009

Twitter Exploit Still Not Fixed

Posted by James on August 26, 2009 8 comments

Sigh.

I wrote another article on Dave Naylor’s blog about the XSS exploit I found yesterday. It seems they’ve made a pretty amateurish attempt to fix the issue, completely missing the massive problem staring them in the face. It seems to be picking up a bit more traction today – I’ve even been quoted by TechCrunch! It’s a bit strange reading my own words back at me in the context of someone else’s article. Neat.

Taking down Twitter

Posted by James on August 25, 2009 2 comments

I had the opportunity (probably) to take down Twitter today. Or at least stir up a whole lot of trouble. I really can’t believe I’m the first person to think of it, but I’m pretty sure it would have worked!

Because I’m a nice guy – and not at all grudgingly, honest – we’re holding off on publishing the details until someone from Twitter gets back to us. Maybe they can give me one of those neat “Verified Account” badges to say thankyou?

Edit: As you probably know if you’re reading this, the details got published.

Xbox 360 Battery Pack Disassembled

Posted by James on August 10, 2009 10 comments

I’ve had an official Xbox 360 ‘Play & Charge’ kit for a year or so now, and the battery life has slowly but surely dropped to nothing over that time. I decided to take it to pieces to see if I could figure out what was up with it. As you can see from the image below, there’s not a lot to it.

Xbox 360 Battery Pack Disassembled

The two halves are just cemented together – you can see the “dashed” effect the cement has left in along the edges. If you want to open one up, you just have to force the two halves apart with enough force to break the bond between them. At least that’s what I did!

There’s (what I assume is) a thermistor that sits between the cells for monitoring their temperature. It’s also fairly obvious the battery pack is just two standard 2100mAh NiMH AA cells. In my case, I assume that one or both of them has stopped working so I’ve ordered some new ones. Hopefully I can just drop them straight in there and all will be good once again. Stay tuned.