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News of the apparent successful brute force attack, and subsequent crack, of the  TI 83 graphing calculator’s native OS has hit the interwebs. A relatively enormous feat (due to the cryptographically signed operating system installed by Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) on this line of calculator instruments), and worth noting. More information (including reports from CrunchGear as well as TICalc) make an appearance after the jump.

From CrunchGear’s Scott Merrill: “Brute forcing success: load any operating system onto your TI-83+ calculator“

“It’s been a very long time since I last used a Texas Instruments graphing calculator. I thought it was cool to write programs on the TI-80 I used in college. It seems that in the time since, things have gotten a little more complex: TI calculators now have cryptographically signed operating systems! Ostensibly this is to prevent clever hackers from loading their own operating systems onto the calculators (the horror!). Leave it to the hackers, though, to find a way to do what they want!…”

From TICalc: “TI-83 Plus OS Signing Key Cracked“

“The ever-mysterious Benjamin Moody posted a cryptic message on the United-TI forum yesterday. In it, he listed the factorization of the 512-bit RSA modulus used by TI’s OS signing key for the 83+ (the “0004 key”). No other details are yet available about how he achieved this feat of substantial brute forcing power. In the event of United-TI downtime, Brandon Wilson has put a copy of Benjamin’s values on his personal website…” “With this achievement, any operating system can be cryptographically signed in a manner identical to that of the original TI-OS. Third party operating systems can thus be loaded on any 83+ calculators without the use of any extra software (that was mentioned in recent news) Complete programming freedom has finally been achieved on the TI-83 Plus…”