julian oliver

Science is Poetry

Trapping rogue AI web crawlers in an infinite self-generating labyrinth of
babble 
 Oliver , 2026 


The Closed World

A telescope modified to look upon a machine-generated cosmos 
 Oliver, 2024 


Per Million

Protest tool centering the most important number of
our time 
 Oliver, Savičić 2022 


Pink Cell Tower

Extroverted Infrastructure 
 Oliver, 2021 


ASUNDER

A super computer is employed to solve the world’s climate and ecological crises,
with uncomfortable results 
 Brain, Oliver, Sjolen 2019 


Script to bulk resize images

Intro A quick script I wrote to create resized copies of all the images in a folder to a given percentage of the original size, copied to a new subfolder in turn with the new geometry in the image filename (which I find helpful). For instance, if you had a folder named Poland containing a gazillion images you wished to have at 20% their current size, you would: ./bulk-image-resize.sh Poland 20…

Vending Private Network

Virtual Private Networking as publicly funded infrastructure 
 Oliver, Vasiliev, 2018 


HARVEST

Wind energy used to mine cryptocurrency to fund climate research 
 Oliver 2017 


The Extinction Gong

A ceremonial automaton for the Sixth Mass Extinction 
 Oliver, Vu, 2017 


USB intrusion watchdog

A simple watchdog script alerting you via email when a USB device is plugged into your system. It was inspired by USB Canary. I didn’t like the Python and Slack dependencies so just quickly wrote this up as a shell script, depending only on msmtp. # Simple USB intrusion watchdog for GNU/Linux systems # # Requires msmtp, configured to send email via a mailserver. # # Sends email to configured…

Script to generate multiple OVPN files

Intro I’ve needed to generate many hundreds of unique OpenVPN files at a time (end with ovpn) for a growing list of Cyborg Unplug owners. Here’s a quick and dirty script that does the job: #!/bin/bash OUTDIR= # /path to the directory to save out to REMOTE= # IP of the VPN server goes here NAME= # Common Name, required. Appended with an iterating number #NAME= unplug_ PORT=1194 # Change…

Detect and disconnect WiFi cameras in that AirBnB you're staying in

Context There have been a few too many stories lately of AirBnB hosts caught spying on their guests with WiFi cameras, using DropCam cameras in particular. Here’s a quick script that will detect two popular brands of WiFi cameras during your stay and disconnect them in turn. It’s based on glasshole.sh. It should do away with the need to rummage around in other people’s stuff,…

Sweeperate

If you’re an SDR geek using OsmoCOM’s excellent SDR suite, you may find this useful. I’ll let the code header below do the explaining: #!/bin/bash # ——————————————————————————–> # ‘osmo-sweeperate’ # Write…

Random MAC addresses with Bash

Intro I needed a shell-only way of generating (pseudo) random MAC addresses for an embedded Linux project, without relying on external CLI programs like macchanger, etc. So, I wrote the below simple shell script. It runs in the bash and requires bc, which are both standard on most Linux distributions and probably OS X, too. Code #!/bin/bash # Generate (pseudo) random MAC addresses RANGE=255 # Set…

COVER ME

Photographs of island holidays used as containers for covert re-distribution of
canonical NSA and GCHQ Leaks, 2015 
 Oliver, 2015 


The Orchid Project

Intro Here I use Flickr as a storage medium for free, open-source firmware (operating system) images that can be used to liberate 10 popular routers. The firmware images are from the OpenWrt project and are encoded into Creative Commons licensed photos of orchids found on Flickr.

The Orchid Project

Using Flickr as a platform for the storage and distribution of router firmware 
 Oliver, 2015 


Starbucks Sentier, Paris 01-05-15

Brief This capture was taken from inside Starbucks at 21 Rue des Petits Carreaux, Paris, starting at around pm. I had a 100Mb target, which I reached in 20 minutes. There were 11 active devices pulling data packets at the site. Method used I could see a lot of traffic on channel 6, which was the Starbucks BSSID. I started the capture on channel 6, like so: airodump-ng mon0 -c 6 -d -w…

Stealth Cell Tower

Rogue cellular infrastructure disguised as office printer 
 Oliver, 2015 


The Deep Sweep

High-altitude Signal Intelligence 
 The Critical Engineering Working Group, 2015 


The Snowden Templates

Introduction This page will host LibreOffice presentation templates based on existing Snowden NSA and GCHQ releases. Use them to fuzz journalists, testing their vigilance and integrity or just to feed your relentless, fist-eating paranoia that the NSA and GCHQ leaks might actually be a part of a vast and evil Alternate Reality Game designed by Glenn Greenwald. Afterall, what do we know? NSA…

The Crystal Line

The future of war, heard through its past. 
 Oliver 2015 


Unintended Emissions

Public platform revealing how much our devices talk behind our backs 
 The Critical Engineering Working Group, 2015- 


The Snowden Templates

Templating Paranoia 
 Oliver 2015 


Noise of the World

Introduction To my surprise, I found the news to be even bleaker today than in previous days and so out of self-preservation chose not to read further. Instead I took the opportunity to render it out as noise, hearing it instead. The basic technique is very simple, capture traffic on a network interface with the popular packet capture tool tcpdump and throw it straight to the sound card, which on…

CSV from 'iw' output

Intro A long and lingering issue with wireless 802.11 work in a UNIX context is filtering AP scans into a meaningful form such that the important bits (BSSID, ESSID, channel) can be used by shell scripts, PHP, etc. This is something grappled by many with ‘iwlist’, but as it is now legacy (along with ‘iwconfig’) across Linux distributions, a migration of scripts to…

Battery alarm for GNU/Linux systems

I needed a little audible alarm to alert me when a laptop on the other side of the room or little device without display is running out of battery. Written on the run it’s nothing complex - all I need to know is when I’m under an hour so I can plug in. You’re welcome. Code #!/bin/bash # Cute little audible alarm for low battery on GNU/Linux systems. # Requires 'beep' and 'acpi'.

Glasshole.sh in context

My interview for Swedish Press.

Find a Google Glass and kick it from the network

“Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.” - A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, 1993

glasshole.sh

Find a Google Glass device and kick it from the network 
 Oliver, 2014 


My interview for Israel's Haaretz, in English

Context I was invited to Tel Aviv to give a workshop and public lecture, as part of the Print Screen festival. While there I was interviewed by Ido Kenan, a prominent technology and culture journalist, for Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper. The interview was conducted in English but translated and published in Hebrew. It was presented in a broader article on Critical Engineering and…

Method for extraction and presentation of image content from captured wireless traffic

Intro Here I present a simple method, using command-line utilities wrapped up in shell scripts, for extracting JPG/GIF/PNG images from captured wireless traffic and presenting them in a browser. This is something similar to that done live by standalone software like driftnet, which I modified for use in my Foehnseher project, but being a C program and a bit awkward to work with I wanted to…

Public Patch

‘Physical patch’ for security cameras, overlaying pro-public copyright terms. 
 Oliver 2014 


On my rejection of a Prix Ars nomination

I was nominated for an award in the Interactive Art category of PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA. This is the letter from Ars Electronica (with jury member name removed): ..on Thu, Mar 06, 2014 at :00PM +0000, Prixars Interactive wrote: Your work The Transparency Grenade has been nominated by our Jury member XXXX for the Prix Ars Electronica 2014 / Interactive Art category - CONGRATULATIONS! This year’s…

Documentation of GSM spoofing strategy used at Transmediale, 2014

Introduction This post documents aspects of the GSM spoofing component of PRISM: The Beacon Frame, as presented at Transmediale 2014. On the opening night of Transmediale the project successfully hijacked the cellular connection of at least 740 phones, without any interaction from users. Many more were intercepted the following day. While the intervention was met with much appreciation, humour and…

(untitled)

Resume to screen-lock for minimal window managers on Linux/BSD

If, like me, you don’t use a desktop environment but rather an ultra minimal window manager like DWM or Evil WM you may miss the same suspend-and-resume-to-screenlock seen in desktop environments (Ubuntu, OS X, Windows). This is how I’ve been doing it for 5 or so years: I use xtrlock as my X11 screen-locker. It has a small install footprint, just 88K, and can be neatly integrated into…

Kill Packet

Android and Server Side code, proposal and reference implementation This project was started to address a hypothetical case one has volatile data on a remote machine that needs to be removed as fast and as discretely as possible. In such situations opening up a laptop and logging in via SSH, an SFTP/FTP browser etc may simply be too slow. Rather, it would be more convenient to just long-press a…

Remote Install

Installation of software art as software art installation 
 Oliver, 2013 


Flamer

Quarantined, gun-shaped USB stick deliberately infected with the Flamer ‘cyber weapon’ 
 Oliver, 2013 


PRISM: The Beacon Frame

Approximated NSA Surveillance Field Technology. GSM and WiFi interceptor 
 Oliver and Vasiliev, 2013 


No Network

Mobile network jammer in the form of a battle tank 
 Oliver 2013 


Kill Packet

This post explores a hypothetical case where one has volatile data on a remote machine that needs to be removed as fast and as discretely as possible without having to open up a laptop and log in via SSH, an SFTP/FTP browser etc. Rather, this post assumes it would be more convenient to just hit a single button on your phone or click a single icon that sends a network packet to the server,…

Antisocial Wireless Networking

The below script will find other devices on the wireless LAN with you and deauthenticate them, in the spirit of antisocial networking. It requires a GNU/Linux host, aireplay-ng and arp-scan, all of which are in the repositories for most Linux distributions. Feel free to use it on networks with horrible people and/or devices.
#!/bin/bash # ANTISOCIAL WIRELESS NETWORK SCRIPT # requires arp-scan,…

Network shouting

In public space we can speak to ourselves, another person or to everybody. This latter kind of speaking is known as shouting. On a computer network the equivalent comes in the form of ‘broadcast’ packets, sent to every single host (computer, smartphone, router) on the same network subnet you are on. Such packets are used to manage aspects of the network’s functionality or…

Google WebFonts without dialing Google

If you don’t want to be sending a notice to Google every time your site is visited - due to the fact that all webfonts are downloaded each time from Google - you can do this. Go to the Google WebFonts page for your font. Add it to your “Collection”. Download your collection locally to a folder with the name of your font and unzip it. Go to the URL in your CSS for the webfont (in…

Song of the Theodolites

A project proposal for Screen City, City of Stavanger, 2013 Wherever it sets foot, the theodolite heralds change. For centuries this device has been used by the surveyor to measure both urban and rural environments, resulting in Euclidean models used by the planners and developers that shape the world we live in. Song of the Theodolites diverts the forboding gaze of the theodolite to the service…

The Weise7 Incompatible Archive

Art catalogue and Internet-independent wireless server 
 Studio Weise7, 2013 


OtherNet

Workshop intensive on the installation, deployment and administration of tools
that implement decentralisation of network services 
 Oliver, Vasiliev, 2014- 


Solitary Confinement

Exhibition of quarantined PC deliberately infected with Stuxnet virus. 
 Oliver, 2013