Emeryth

I have succeeded in building a handheld hacking device with a display out of a fonera (pineapple router). In the end it's not very practical, considering you could do the same with a small laptop, but it's a lot of fun to build one. Check out my results: http://emerythacks.blogspot.com/2010/08/wifon-fonera-powered-handheld-wifi.html (old version with a monochorme character screen) http://emerythacks.blogspot.com/2011/04/wifon-20.html (newer version with a color LCD and a touchscreen) In both cases it consists of the pineapple router talking via the serial port to a microcontroller driving the display and collecting input.

To get an address via DHCP you need to use udhcpc after connecting, like this: udhcpc -i ath0

Somewhere in the web interface there is a "site survey" button, which will show you available networks and let you connect to them. Connecting manually using iwconfig also works. You're gonna have to figure out the rest of the settings by yourself, because that depends on what are you trying to achieve.

Yes it is possible to connect the fonera as a client, I've tried it. In my case to achieve routing from wifi in client mode to wired I had to turn off bridging, firewall and set up a route manually.

It's simply that some devices are stronger than others. There can be many factors during the design of such a device - cost, power consumption etc. Keep in mind that radio transmission power is regulated by the government so manufacturers can't go crazy with it.

500mA is the theoretical max, but motherboard manufacturers usually allow higher currents so people can charge their ipods faster :P Assuming your are using a modern PC with no defects in USB implementation, the worst case is that the voltage will drop due to overcurrent and the fonera will crash or restart. One other thing to keep in mind is that you should use wires thick enough for the current draw, and USB wires are usually very thin, so watch out. Refer to this: http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

It's the voltage regulator. High res pictures of the board: http://www.dearhoney.idv.tw/gallery/displayimage.php?album=4&pos=1 Unfortunately the marking "7d545 1412d" does not come up with any datasheets. If you are lucky, and it's the only thing that was damaged, you can bypass the regulator entirely - find/build a 3,3V (exactly 3,3V!) power supply and apply the voltage directly to the pins near the serial port (double check the polarity this time :P).

http://events.ccc.de/camp/2011/ Is anyone coming?

I think Hamachi is the easiest solution. Get it here: https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/default.aspx

The maximum txpower is 18dBm, I use it all the time without any problems.

Yes it is possible, but it's hard to find the original firmware image, since nobody wants it ;P.

It can be done with an OpenWrt router with USB support and a USB sound card. http://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/10/building-a-wifi-radio-part-1-introduction/

But Backtrack is just like any other distro, you don't need it to hack stuff. Decide what tools you want to use and see if they can be ported to the DS.

Unfortunately there is no way, the PCI and USB buses are just too different for such a conversion to make sense.

I wanted to show off an upgrade to my "handheld WiFi pentesting device" I wrote about some time ago. It's a fonera 1.0 router with an attached color LCD touchscreen, crammed together in a 150 mm x 100 mm x 28 mm box with an external lithium battery pack. Photos: It certainly is handheld, but it doesn't do much pentesting yet, just some basic DoS attacks with mdk3 and Jasager of course :). I have finished the hardware some time ago and hoped to make more software before I release it to the Internet. Unfortunately, my main problems were lack of time (as always :P) and very limited resources of the fonera - it runs out of RAM easily and crashes a lot. So right now I'm considering doing a RAM upgrade before continuing with this project. More info and photos on my blog: http://emerythacks.blogspot.com/