Modding a Linksys NAS200 to stay cool.

I got the Linksys NAS200 a while back to hold all my music, movies, and TV shows. For a while it worked great and I really liked being able to do streaming and shit from it but I soon found out that the HDDs I had inside the unit where getting supper hot, even to the point that you couldn’t hold them. I of course had a to lose a HDD before I figured that out 🙁 I was just a little upset about this so I opened the unit up to find this weak little fan inside that as hard as it tried it just could not keep the drives cool. Then I decided to beef up the cooling system a little by adding another fan to the mix.

So I found 5v PC fan “for the cooling”, a hot iron “to cut/melt a hole for the fan”, a soldering iron and some solder, a screw driver, and hot glue. Now I would like to say I got it all right the first time around, but I can’t. Now the unit it self runs off of 5v so all I had to do was solder it to the board somewhere. My first attempt was a failure. I tried to solder the new fan to the same terminals that the little weak fan was using. While it did power the fan and work, the unit would eventualy stop responding. I figured the fan was drawing to much power to low in the chain. So I opened’er back up and moved the new fan to the start of the chain, I connected it right where the power comes into the unit. The unit it self runs on 5v and the Linksys power supply that came with it only gives out 5v so no worries there. Then all I had to do was put it all back together, hot glue the fan in place to suck the hot air out and turn it on.

My mod works great and it keeps my HDD’s nice and cool now 🙂 The only down side is it makes a little more noise now and I have to unplug the power from the unit to turn the fan off 😛 And now for some pictures.

Here is the hole I made with some info, the stock fan is on the other side of the unit:

Here is the main board:

Another view of the board:

Here is the end result:

Another view of the end game:

K thats it, peace.

WIN a free pass to THOTCON 0x3 and go with dc414!

Ngharo and I will be giving a talk at THOTCON 0x3 in April and one “maybe two” lucky dc414 member(s) are coming with us! Our talk is titled “How I fucked your grandma”. It’s about the security implications of social communication, activity/wellness monitoring and home automation technology we are putting in the homes of the elderly designed for aging in place and the risks that go with it. It should be a good time and I know a good number of other dc414 members already have tickets so im sure we will also be raising some hell as well! 🙂 As a speaker I will have access to free beer….I hope our talk is early… if not I hope I’m not too wasted to stand by the time we go up, lol, and I hope to see you there!

For a chance to win a free ticket to THOTCON 0x3 just be at the next dc414 meeting, it will be part of the dc414 free junk give away.

First 2012 meeting recap

January’s meeting had a few kinks but all in all everything went well and we had a few new faces in the crowd. We had some issues with the G+ hangout, but it was our first time and i’m sure it will go smoother the second time around. Then i had video issues while trying to give my LFI attacks demo and had to give a backup demo, but everyone else was awesome.

Darkwind gave his first presentation with dc414 and it was a good one for sure. He showed us some of his modded radio equipment and how to decode all sorts of transmissions, from HAM faxes, pagers, DTMF tones and more being broadcast in the air ways. Talked a little about cell tower emulators and software radios. dw5304 and Klaiviel gave us a run down of how they hacked the new xbox 360 to play ripped games off the HDD in just a few not so easy steps 😛 Then dw5304 have a little demo on resetting passwords on any windows box with just a few key strokes. I gave the last presentation of the night and after my LFI demo fail i was able to give a nice little demo of how the ODiG tool works and how it can aid in pwning networks.

One of the coolest things about the meeting, it was our honor to have Jayson Street join us via G+. We hope to see him at the next meeting. Cmoney couldn’t join us but I was able to snap a few shots here and there which you can view here. The big winner of free dc414 junk was Stephanie, here she is with her winnings: “ALFA usb 802.11n card”
Stephanie and her winnings