(This is a guest post by tmbinc. You can read the original post here on debugmo.de.)

Fail.

That’s probably the first word you think of when hearing the word “OpenVizsla”. It all started good in - WTF - 2010 when bushing and pytey thought it would be a good idea to build an open-source USB sniffer.

Scam. That’s what people called the project after unable to provide a working prototype after one year, two years, three years. But let me assure you: this project is not a scam. We just failed. A lot.

I don’t want to swirl up the past - that was done before, but rather present the current state of affairs. TL;DR: It looks good, and OV3 actually a working USB analyzer these days, and it shipped to (almost) all of the original backers. Once all of them shipped, more of them will be sold to the public.

Let’s start with a hardware overview of ov3, the third attempt to get it right. By the way, you can find everything in the openvizsla github repository. Just in case you want to build your own USB analyzer.

One of the things we’ve been playing with recently is the AT&T Microcell. This device is intended to provide a cheap way for AT&T to increase their network coverage at the expense of their customers. The device is essentially a small cell-tower in a box, which shuttles your calls and data back to the AT&T mothership over your home broadband connection.

This kind of device is becoming more and more popular with the various mobile providers. They are commonly known as residential femtocells.

We’re curious. We love gadgets. We love to take gadgets apart and see what makes them tick. So naturally, we’ve taken a look at a number of different femtocells.

We finally got around to looking at this AT&T variant this week, and discovered that it is totally full of fail.