morcheeba's Journal: CVS Camcorder usably hacked

Here's my rejected slashdot submission:

2005-08-03 06:16:55 CVS Disposable Camcorder USB-Only Hack (Hardware,Hardware Hacking) (rejected)

The CVS Disposable Camcorder (mentioned about a month ago) has now been usably hacked so that videos can be downloaded over USB - no need to desolder the flash memory. Finally, some healthy free-market competition to CVS's expensive development service, just like in the analog world. Last week, dakotamod and mconsidine were able to coax mystery responses back from the camera. I found what looked like a set of challenge & response packets stored in memory, and then traced the firmware until I found where they was accessed. I thought I had found a locking mechanism, but wasn't sure until I realized that it only allowed the commands dakotamod & mconsidine had found were accessible... we were on to something! I figured out what the commands did and how to use them to how to unlock the camera. The community took it from there... daBass figured out the USB command to download the most recent video, and Corscaria and BillW quickly released tools. When unlocked, it seems that many standard windows drivers can be used with slight tweaks, including enabling full VGA resolution recording @ reduced frame rate (as opposed to the 1/4 VGA default).

There are now a lot more sample videos. And, lastly, this removable memory hack is awesome.
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I sent the same text (plus more) to Makezine, where it was published, and then boing boing picked it up.