This month I want to highlight a post, Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM for 98% Cost Saving by dekuNukem. This author is curious about their countertop dishwasher with proprietary detergent cartridges, and provides a well written and detailed account of their journey to hack the cartridge DRM and save costs. The author reminds us of something we already know: there is no hardware or software that someone won’t try to hack. We should be constantly aware that everything we create will, at some point, be the target of an attack.

https://github.com/dekuNukem/bob_cassette_rewinder

“An eagle-eyed user…pointed out the value at 0xa1 is calculated as Washes left XOR 0x50, thanks! Not sure why they did it like this, but anyway…With the simple EEPROM chip, standard 0.1 inch contact spacing, one-byte counter, and no error checking, it sure seems Daan Tech didn’t try really hard, guess they reckoned that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Well, less work for me too!”