How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button

Re:How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button by Rimpinths on Monday August 17, 2015 @06:04PM (#10076444)

Does this remind anybody of the CueCat? Same story...subsidized hardware that hackers repurposed for other uses. I think the makers of CueCat tried to unsuccessfully sue the hackers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/89

Do the Amazon Dash buttons come with a license agreement? Has anyone read it to see if it prohibits these kinds of hacks?

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Re:How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button by nivla on Monday August 17, 2015 @06:33PM (#10076572)

Well CueCat was "free" (Although mostly forced on you). Amazon dash is a regular paid product on Amazon. Neither of them can hold you accountable for hacking/repurposing it. However, if someone has a chance that would be CueCat.

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Re:How I Hacked Amazon’s $5 WiFi Button by Sanddancer on Monday August 17, 2015 @07:38PM (#10076791)

Wifi chips are cheap. So cheap, that I'd all but guarantee they're still making a profit on it, even at $5. You can get ESP8266 chips from people in china for about $2.50 each including shipping, and those will do everything these buttons do. Given Amazon's volume, they probably cost half that for them, so hacking them is pretty much free advertising.

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