Yet another Rapidshare hack

A few weeks after I published my Rapidshare Linux hack (which removes the delay between two consecutive downloads by changing the MAC and the IP addresses) and probably completely unrelated to this Rapidshare introduced another annoying "feature" - up to 1 minute delay before the first download.

It turns out that there is a trivial hack for this too (but only for these who are smartlucky to use Firefox). First you will have to install Greasemonkey Firefox addon and after that my Rapidshare delay removal script.

Enjoy!

P.S. This Javascript hack is not exactly new, I just automated it using Greasemonkey.
P.P.S. Here is the script source code:

window.addEventListener(
'load',
function() { this.c = 0},
true);

It simply changes the value of "c" variable to 0 after the page finishes loading. This variable is used by Rapidshare Javascript delay function, so my script just sets this delay to 0.

Update: Apparently this does not work anymore as they check the time delay on the server too.

Rapidshare hack for Linux

As it turns out it's unbelievably easy to overcome annoying time delay between downloads of the free Rapidshare account. And it's even easier if you happen to run Linux.

Rapidshare "remembers" the IP address you used to download, so all you have to do is to change it between subsequent downloads by restarting DHCP client. In order to ensure that you will not get the same IP address (Linux DHCP client tries to get the same IP by first issuing the DHCP REQUEST and only if it fails - DHCP DISCOVER; and most DHCP servers will try to lease the same IP address for the same MAC address) you have to change... right, the MAC address. And, as I mentioned above, this is yet another example of Linux being much more user-oriented OS than the other one - changing MAC address on Linux is a breeze.

#!/bin/sh
ifdown eth0
let "rnum = $RANDOM % 255"
d=`printf "%02X\n" $rnum`
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:0F:EA:37:9F:$d
rm /var/lib/dhclient/dhclient-eth0.leases
ifup eth0


Remember to change the MAC address of the correct interface, i.e. the one on which you get the normal (routable) IP address.

LinuxConf Europe 2007 article and presentation: Hacking Embedded Linux Based Home Appliances

Abstract

Embedded Linux is an interesting phenomenon. With millions of devices shipped to-day, from residential gateways to cellular phones, it may be Linux's biggest success story ever. However, it gets disproportionately small amount of interest from the open source community. Part of the blame is on the companies developing embedded Linux based products, which feel uncomfortable with the idea of opensource. However, even bigger problem can be the fact that embedded systems are perceived as black boxes which are very hard to hack, contrary to an "open" PC.
This article tries to break this stigma by showing Linux developers how to hack various Linux based devices that they might already have at home. If we understand that it's easy and fun to hack embedded systems, I believe embedded Linux issues will get more attention from opensource community, which will eventually result in more embedded-friendly Linux kernel, more embedded-oriented opensource projects and better Linux-based products.

Links:
article
presentation