The Ritz Dakota Digital is a type of point-and-shoot digital camera, introduced in July of 2003, and sold by the Ritz/Wolf Camera store franchise. It has a digital photo resolution of 1.2 megapixels (1280 pixels wide, 960 pixels high) and a storage capacity of 25 pictures. A point and shoot camera with a zoom lens and built in flash A point and shoot camera, also called a compact camera, is a still camera designed primarily for simple operation. ... A digital camera, as opposed to a film or video camera, uses an electronic sensor to transform images (or video) into electronic data. ... 2003 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December A timeline of events in the news for July, 2003. ... 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A pixel (a contraction of picture element) is one of the many tiny dots that make up the representation of a picture in a computers memory. ...

When introduced, the Dakota Digital sparked massive interest, primarily due to its price tag: $10.99 (US Dollars). At the time, a digital camera of similar resolution and functionality was in the $40-$70 range. The reason for the low price was due to the fact that the Dakota Digital was a single-use camera, i.e. the consumer takes the pictures, returns the camera to the store, and the pictures are returned to the consumer in print and CD-ROM format (after an additional $11 processing fee) while the camera is refurbished and resold. The Dakota Digital was the first digital camera ever manufactured using the single-use concept. The disposable or single-use camera is a simple box camera sold with a roll of film installed, meant to be used once. ... The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ...

Almost immediately after introduction, several people began work on hacking the single-use Dakota Digital in attempts to transform it into what would be the least expensive reusable digital camera available at the time. In November of 2003, only four months after it was introduced, they succeeded in this task. Technical details about the internal components were publicly posted on the Internet, along with instructions for creating various compatible link cables that connected the Dakota Digital to home PC's. Special third-party software was also made available, providing a way to download the pictures and clear the camera's internal flash memory to allow more pictures to be taken. The technical data, instructions and software fulfilled all requirements to make the Dakota Digital reusable. A hack in progress in Lobby 7 at MIT. Hack is a term in the slang of the technology culture which has come into existence over the past few decades. ... 2003 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December A timeline of events in the news for November, 2003. ... The tower of a personal computer. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... This article is about the computer terms. ... Flash memory is a form of EEPROM that allows multiple memory locations to be erased or written in one programming operation. ...

Public announcement of how to transform the single-use camera into a reusable camera, paired with the very low camera price, immediately created high demand for the Dakota Digital as people started buying them so they could acquire their own reusable digital camera at low cost. Along with the increased demand, Ritz began pulling the Dakota Digital out of its stores after learning of the hack. Because of these two factors, it very rapidly became difficult to find the original Dakota Digital camera.

In July of 2004, a group of hackers made available methods to further improve the original Dakota Digital by upgrading the camera's firmware, or internal programming. These firmware upgrades added several new features, most notably the ability to adjust or remove the original 25 picture limit, along with various other changes and improvements. July is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In computing, firmware is software that is embedded in a hardware device, that allows reading and executing the software, but does not allow modification, , writing or deleting data by an end user. ...

A few months after the original Dakota Digital was pulled off the shelves, Ritz introduced two new models of Dakota Digital, the PV2 series. One was similar to the original model with a price of $10.99, while the other, priced at $18.99, contained a color LCD screen that displayed the most recent picture taken. Both are based on an entirely new chipset manufactured by SMaL Camera Technologies. Hacking of this camera has been more of a group effort than the first. John Maushammer removed & read the FLASH memory chip, wrote a disassembler, and commented significant portions of the firmare. Others investigated the USB interface, and John figured out the authentication mechanism and how to disable it. Others figured out how to download the images using modified versions of software for SMaL's other cameras, and other people are reverse-engineering the proprietary RAW file format. LCD redirects here. ... Chipset refers to a group of integrated circuits (chips) that are designed to work together, and are usually marketed as a single product. ... A disassembler is a computer program which translates machine language to assembly language. ...

The security mechanism on the original camera consisted of a challenge and response. The challenge was the camera's serial number, and the response was the 4-byte result of a simple hash function -- serial number converted from ascii to bcd divided by 4. The weakness is that the hash function was stored in the firmware, so it could be completely understood and replicated. The PV2 used a better challenge and response mechanism. It is better not because it uses a longer key (128 byte challenge, 128 byte response), but because the hash function is not stored algorithmically in firmware. Theoretically, the response could not be mathematically related to the challenge and the only correlation between the two could be a record saved in the manufacturer's database (which authorized processing systems would have to access to read pictures from the camera). In practice, though, only a few challenge/response pairs have been seen in the wild. A hash function is a function that converts an input from a (typically) large domain into an output in a (typically) smaller range (the hash value, often a subset of the integers). ...

External links

• Slashdot | Ritz Disposable Digital Camera Hacked (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/12/2354206)
• Technical details for the Ritz Dakota Digital, with the original Mac and Linux drivers (http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/DakotaDigital.html)
• Windows driver & more technical details for the Ritz Dakota Digital, including hacking instructions (From cexx.org) (http://cexx.org/dakota/)
• Details and instructions for upgrading the Dakota Digital firmware (http://www.balerdi.com.ar/dakota/)

• PV2 photos & technical details (http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/lcd.html)
• Bulletin Board with latest PV2 hacking discussion (http://www.camerahacking.com)