The Raspberry Pi is causing trouble again, the despised single-board artifact

Raspberry Pi, also known as the "ash-eating pie" by people in the world, is small and versatile, and is often used by criminals. This time it caused trouble again.

Fu Bin丨Author

Produced by Electronic Engineering World丨

Recently, three criminals were caught in Lubbock, Texas. They used Raspberry Pi to bypass automatic teller machine (ATM) security checks and steal more than $5,700 in cash from multiple ATMs in West Texas. At that time, police Evidence of their theft has been obtained.

The police found several Raspberry Pis and other evidence in the hotel room of the three criminals. They used the Raspberry Pi to successfully shut down the ATM's security system and then broke into the drawer to get cash. The police have not yet disclosed the identity of the Raspberry Pi. The specific model and how the crime was committed were not disclosed.

In fact, this is not the first time Raspberry Pi has been used to steal money from ATMs. You must know that the Raspberry Pi itself is small and highly concealable. Generally, the size of the Raspberry Pi is only the size of an ordinary credit card. At the same time, although the Sparrow is small and has all the internal organs, it is known as a card-type computer. This is its unique advantage.

In 2014, researchers at the European Hacker Conference opened the top of the ATM cover and connected to the Ethernet, USB or RS-232 port through the weakly protected top service area (including GSM/GPRS modem), and the attacker only used a simple key or The material opens the top of the machine, and as long as it's done quickly enough, the process controlling the device remains undetected.

Since ATM machines and payment terminals share the same API, they can easily access and control multiple modules. Using the Windows platform based on Extensions for Financial Services (XFS), after obtaining the API, people can easily access the ATM host and directly manage multiple modules installed on the ATM. Multiple peripherals on the device, such as card readers, PIN pads, touch screens, dispensing devices, etc.

In 2021, criminals physically connected the Raspberry Pi to the ATM machine, forcing the ATM machine to spit out money. After spitting out all the money, not only did the host leave no traces, but the surveillance video itself was also controlled by the Raspberry Pi. This is the same as other devices on the compromised ATM being controlled.

Of course, it is not easy to provide adequate security protection measures for ATM machines. For example, experts from LINK in the UK recommend replacing the default locks in service areas and using cameras to monitor ATM machines. Positive Technologies experts have also suggested that this situation may be reversed if ATM providers can develop a new open specification for components in ATM machines and conduct interaction and authentication.

Such crimes not only occur in ATM machines, but have also been used for hacking.

Previously, a Raspberry Pi was connected to the IT network of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) without authorization or by bypassing security checks, and 500MB of data in 35 folders was stolen. The hack exposed JPL's confidential information about building and operating planetary robotic spacecraft. Behind the attack, there may be more cutting-edge technology patents being destroyed. NASA officials said that a large part of the 500MB of data stolen this time is related to the Mars mission planned by the United States. This also indirectly proves that there may be another reason for the hacker attack. After the attack, the hackers can go deeper. Attack, and ultimately hack into, mission systems to manipulate communications signals for aerial space missions.

As an open source and cheap Linux microcontroller device, although the Raspberry Pi has been targeted by bad guys, it has actually gradually become an indispensable presence in industry.

Raspberry Pi has always been famous for being interesting. Just take its name, which is a pun: it can be a fruit like "apple", it can also be a homophony of "Raspberry Pie" and "blowing a raspberry", or it can even represent The magical irrational number "π", in real life, many people also use it as a toy, but in fact it is a very powerful productivity.

Initially, the Raspberry Pi was developed to solve a small problem. At a time when the number of applications to study computer science at Cambridge University was dwindling, with the number of applicants falling from 600 to 250 per year, Eben Upton planned to provide some children in the UK with a low-cost, hacker-style computer. Its programs recruit more and better students. The goal at that time was very small, that is, to produce 1,000 sets and put them into the hands of 1,000 suitable children.

A brief history of the development of Raspberry Pi, watchmaking丨Electronic Engineering World

As hardware itself, the Raspberry Pi family has grown tremendously.

Since 2012, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released 20 new models. If you include all 4 RAM capacities of the Raspberry Pi 4 B and all 32 variants of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (with different RAM and storage capacities, with or without Wi-Fi), there are more than 52 products in total.

Each generation of the Raspberry Pi series uses Broadcom's Arm architecture processor. The memory is generally 2GB~8GB. It uses TF card as the system storage media (the first generation uses SD card). It is equipped with USB interface and HDMI video output, and has built-in Ethernet. Network/WLAN/Bluetooth and other connections, can use a variety of operating systems.

For example, for low-cost scenarios, the Raspberry Pi Pico, which only costs 4 US dollars, is the first choice. There is also the flagship product Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with up to 8GB of memory; there is also the all-in-one computer Raspberry Pi Model 400, which has the same performance as The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is similar, with 4GB of RAM; for those who need a smaller, cheaper board, there's the Raspberry Pi Zero series, which has integrated Bluetooth and WiFi and 512MB of SDRAM.

The most powerful thing about the Raspberry Pi is that even if it is an "old antique" in 2012, it can run the latest operating system in 2022 and will never be outdated.

It can be said that the current Raspberry Pi not only opens the door to the programming world for people from different ages and backgrounds, but has also become an ideal choice for application scenarios such as electric vehicles, the Internet of Things, or automated assembly lines.

Main models of Raspberry Pi, Watchmaking丨Electronic Engineering World

Unlike ordinary Raspberry Pi, industrial Raspberry Pi is more suitable for industrial environments:

• First, it is industrially packaged, the operating temperature is raised to -40℃~55℃, has an IP20 protection level, and has passed industrial standard tests (EN61131-2 and IEC 61000-6-2), such as EMI, surge, and burst Incident and other tests, as well as ESD polarity protection, reaching 4KV/8KV;

• The second is modularity and scalability. It adopts polycarbonate material shell and DIN rail installation. It can be connected to a series of modules such as expansion IO and gateway through simple connectors, making it convenient for use in industrial scenarios;

• The third is that the industrial Raspberry Pi is installed with a LINUX-based Rasbian system and real-time patches are installed;

• Fourth, the industrial Raspberry Pi uses a commonly used industrial 24V power supply, which is more stable and equipped with load protection.

From a market perspective, 5 million units of Raspberry Pi were sold in 2015 and 2017. By February 2022, the tenth anniversary of Raspberry Pi, a total of 46 million units had been delivered, creating a market of US$1 billion. However, in the recent period, there has been a shortage of chips and demand has exceeded supply, causing the Raspberry Pi to become a financial product. In Q1 of 2023, only 800,000 Raspberry Pi units were sold, which became the lowest quarterly sales of Raspberry Pi since 2015. .

From a capital perspective, the future of Raspberry Pi is also brighter. In 2021, a few months after the Raspberry Pi received 45 million pounds of investment from Lansdowne Partners and Ezrah Charitable, the Raspberry Pi was preparing to go public and valued at a premium of approximately $500 million; in April 2023, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation Sony Semiconductor Solutions said it has invested in Raspberry Pi Ltd., a deal that expands the existing manufacturing relationship between Sony and Raspberry Pi.

In fact, according to estimates, nearly 40% of the Raspberry Pi market is used in industrial applications, including industrial computers, multimedia computers (student laptops), Internet of Things applications or test platforms. In many cases, mature industrial and During commercialization, many products have not publicly adopted the Raspberry Pi. In addition, most industrial applications of the Raspberry Pi are foreign projects, so many people are not aware of it.

The most important advantage of Raspberry Pi is the continuous optimization of the system, abundant resource support and power saving. Especially for those who don't know Linux development, they can get started and deploy quickly.

At present, from the perspective of product design, there is a gap in Raspberry Pi's understanding of specific scenario applications in vertical industries and related product certifications. In addition, there are more commercial products for Arm development boards with similar solutions, and the commercialization solutions are more mature. In addition, the supply is also limited. Once affected by a lack of cores, the competitiveness of the Raspberry Pi was not as strong as expected.

However, the power of the Raspberry Pi itself cannot be ignored, and its coverage is gradually broadening, such as large AI models such as ChatGPT. Don’t ignore the Raspberry Pi, after all, one more solution option means one more possibility.