The Hak5-To-Go Case.

I’ve been a long time fan of the Hak5 team. I remember having to download their episodes pre-youtube days, and I remember the old oriental screen in the background. (Go find some old episodes.) The Evil Server was still around alive when I started to watch them. That was ages and many studios ago.

As you already might know I like my gear to look like its out of movie. When I saw the National Geographic ‘Breakthrough (Season 2 Episode 2: Cyber Terror)’ with @hak5darren, @jaysonstreet and others (@pilgrim, @davekennedy etc) I knew that everybody had the same issue. You go on an engagement , you pull out your gear from your back, plug in the cables, boot up the laptop and start your engagement. Then you are done, you unplug everything, kinda throw everything back in the backpack and head back to the analysis of your recon. The problem with this approach is , unless you are super organized , you can forget some small dongle or cable you need. I for one will pull out my gear in the workshop, to get some stuff done. Then before I leave I have to put all the cables and dongles back in to my bag etc etc and inevitably I forget something.

So I decided to build a case that I could travel with and setup , run my gear throw everything back into in a more organized matter. So last year I contacted @snubs and asked if they would help me build a Hak5-to-go case.

You can see the case in action at an interview I did with @snubs a the @hak5 booth this year at DEF CON 26.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7aAJ-n2ACI&frags=pl%2Cwn

The outer shell is an ABS hard case:

Outer Dimensions: 430mm x 380mm x 154 mm
Inner Dimmesions : 395mm x 320mm x 143 mm.

The tray is a 3D printed tray made out of 3 parts. Mainly due to the fact of my printer’s print volume. The trays have an orange vinyl sheet on the bottom to give some contrast between the gear and the trays.

The trays are connected together with a connector that secures the trays in place. The outer 2 trays are held by screws to the outer shell.

The lid is actually a foldable bluetooth keyboard that is glued to one of the connectors that hold the tray together.

Inside the case is a Rpi 3 running Raspian Stretch Lite that can connect to the Wifi Nano or the Tetra. Its basically there as a terminal so you don’t need to boot up your laptop to configure the Hak5 gear.

The screen is a Waveshare 7 Inch screen that can be powered by the micro usb port on the screen. This way I can eliminate one more “power cable” and I don’t have to rely on the USB port of the RPi to power the screen.

The backplate for the screen can hold a Wifi Pineapple Nano and also acts as a holder for the screen and a way to attach a “magic arm” to the screen. A “magic arm” is a camera equipment arm that has one know and has tension wires inside that allow you to secure the position and loosening with just one knob .

The Wifi Pineapple Tetra has its own case cause I often just want to grab the Tetra and go. The outshell is a “action camera case” you can find online. Often these cases are made out of hard foam as their outshell. Using masking tape you can easily mark off where the Tetra will sit and use a sharp blade and slowly push the blade through and you can cut out the hole for the Tetra to slide through. This way the Tetra can sit inside the case and you still have access to the ports without having to pull out the whole Tetra.

I changed the antennas to a dual band flat antennas so that the antennas could fold in and right next to each other.

*THE FOLLOWING PART WILL VOID THE WARRANTY * DO NOT DO THIS *

(unless..you know the drill)

The slight problem I was having was that the antennas of the Tetra stick out to the side, I did for a while use some 90 degree connectors but often found that the connectors would come loose or break due to the tension of travel. So I popped open the Tetra and found out that the SMA connectors are not soldered on to the Tetra board but they are just pig tails. So I designed a plate that could sit on top of the Tetra and move the connectors in a vertical position. The pigtails are a bit too long for the actual Tetra case to hold them and also the outer shell of the Tetra was too thin to hold the connectors. So the plate has just enough of a thickness that if you the pigtails can be in vertical orientation without causing too much stress on the pigtails.

The plate also will hold an Anker battery so you can power the Tetra off the battery in “standalone” mode. The battery is held in place with some velcro ties.

All the part files are on @thingiverse.

Hak5-To-Go Case. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3076053