All Your Coffee Are Belong To Us

Wolf nipple chips writes "Craig Wright discovered that the Jura F90 Coffee maker, with its honest-to-God Jura Internet Connection Kit, can be taken over by a remote attacker, who can cause the coffee to be weaker or stronger; change the amount of water per cup; or cause the machine to require service (call this one a DDoC). 'Best yet, the software allows a remote attacker to gain access to the Windows XP system it is running on at the level of the user.' An Internet-enabled, remote-controlled coffee-machine and XP backdoor — what more could a hacker ask for?"

Not just an attack on the coffee machine

[sinistre]

It would be an attack on the entire company. Imagine the effects of decreased caffeine consumption. Productivity could be going way down. In fact I'd consider the attack a declaration of war.

Check with the Internet Engineering Task Force

[JakartaDean]

Well, I hope someone is checking whether this thing is truly RFC 2324 compliant.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324 [ietf.org]

Ahem

[TBerben]

The should have just run NetBSD on it, like on the toaster [embeddedarm.com]

Re:A culture of helplessness

[Prune]

Same thing with the superautomatic espresso machines. To think that the machine would perform proper tamping technique taking into account the age of the coffee, gind fineness, etc., and that it can figure out when to stop extraction when it's not just a matter of a fixed time period but color and shape of the stream, and the look of the crema in the cup, is silly. Yet it's what any good barista does with a manually-controlled espresso machine (good = NOT Starbucks)

Re:Bah!

[hey!]

I second the Moka machine. I've found the coarseness of the grind doesn't really make that much of a difference to how well it works. Sometimes it might leak a few drops around the seal, but it's not a critical problem. I've brewed American drip grind coffee (because it was all I had handy), and it came out as good as it ever does. It does fine with preground "espresso" grind coffee, producing as you say a cup of coffee that is perhaps a bit less syrup like than bar coffee, but every bit as tasty. Seriously, with a $20 pot, it's hardly worth worrying about if it will "work"; you just put water and grounds in and get coffee out a couple minutes later. It's not like you're going to void the warranty or something.

The Moka pot is extremely fast, and most importantly very easy to clean, which is the downfall of many coffee makers.

In fact it's so convenient I'm thinking of getting a single cup pot. Sometimes I get fresh dark roasted beans and put them in the freezer. Then when I want a cup of coffee I grind them in a brass Turkish coffee grinder, and brew them up in a Moka for a real treat -- better than what you get in most coffee bars over here. The problem is that it takes too long to hand grind enough coffee for six cups.

With a single cup pot I could go from whole beans in a freezer to a fresh cup of Moka in maybe five or six minutes.

I used to think about getting a home espresso machine, but since I've been using the Moka, I have lost interest. I actually think the Moka pot is cooler. The expensive machines like when you go to somebody's house and they pull out a bottle of $100 wine and it's pretty good. Of course it's good. The Moka machine is like going to somebody's house and drinking a great glass of wine, then he shows you the bottle and it has a $12 sticker on it. The guy who can find a great $12 wine is the one who really knows what he's doing.

If I had almost $2000 to drop on a coffee machine, I'd get a bean roaster, an electric grinder, and couple of 12 cup Moka pots. I'd be ready to churn out better coffee than any home machine, and faster too, with enough money left over to keep me supplied with top notch unroasted beans for a long time. You can get a 5lb bag of unroasted estate Jamaica Blue Mountain for a bit over $30, but roasted whole beans will set you back more like $40/lb.

Of course, I'm not really that into coffee (I can stop any time I want), so preroasted, preground coffee does fine for me.

Aeropress

[goombah99]

I have an aeropress at work. They really are as good as they claim to be.

1) way faster than a french press

2) no need to boil the water. Just use an instant hot water tap on the water cooler. Because it brews so fast, and it's all plastic you don't need to have super hot starting water to end up with a very hot drink

3) No additional stuff to clean

4) it's self cleaning without a sink. press out the syringe and the coffee plug falls into the trash can and it's all clean,dry and ready to go back in your drawer.

5) I usually brew an americano (watery espresso) and I find the low acidity of the reduced temperature brewing means I no longer need cream in my coffee. This too is especially useful in the office environment since I don't need a refrigerator and a stock of fresh milk, or messy yucky white powders.

(by the way who was the genius who labeled sysco's coffee creamer "coffee whitener", as though turning it white was the real objecive. It's like something out of Repo man. Tack one of those in the middle of an 8-foot canvas and call it Andy Warhol pop art).