Pamela Anderson Hidden in Lecroy Wavepro Oscilloscope Firmware

[ezalys]

I was just poking around in the firmware image and found an easter egg. Here's how you reproduce it.

If you have the following firmware image... say from the Lecroy yahoo group. It's titled "Wavepro 9XX and DDA260 Firmwave V9.3.0 (Latest)"

Code: [Select]

$ md5 ./vxfusion.fla
MD5 (./vxfusion.fla) = c6bdcdc72ee55bc5d1ae725c657ced51

At an offset of 48465 there's a compressed image.

Code: [Select]

dd if=vxfusion.fla skip=1 bs=48465 of=data.z

Now you can unzip this any way you like... I used gzip with a prepended gzip header

Code: [Select]

$ printf "\x1f\x8b\x08\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00" |cat - ./data.z |gzip -dc > data.raw
gzip: invalid compressed data--crc error

CRC fails, but whatever. Now, at offset 4318044 there's a jpeg header. Curious!

Code: [Select]

dd if=data.raw skip=1 bs=4318044 of=pic.jpg
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
1069348 bytes transferred in 0.001037 secs (1031310783 bytes/sec)

and you get the following image:

https://imgur.com/a/LOnOO (NSFW)

[Fungus]

Now you have to figure out the correct sequence of button presses to make her appear on screen. 

[ezalys]

That's a bit harder 

[Kjelt]

That is an old scope it was decades ago she looked like that 

[Russ]

Haven’t heard that name in awhile. Is she still around?

[EEVblog]

Haven’t heard that name in awhile. Is she still around?

Yes, and she's dating Julian Assange last I heard, because, you know, the EEVblog forum is obviously gossip central.

LOL @ Lecroy, busted!
Well, one firmware engineer in charge of linking the firmware anyway.

[xrunner]

That is an old scope it was decades ago she looked like that 

Wow really, doesn't even look like her to me. 

[Lightages]

I am sure that the woman in the image isn't Pamela Anderson. A google image search shows no result.

[Asuka]

I am sure that the woman in the image isn't Pamela Anderson. A google image search shows no result.

Tineye gives this:

https://tineye.com/search/5b39f6df16acdf076d827eb92e7f7b70020e8c44/

Apparently it comes from a 1996 PlayBoy:

http://www.ebay.it/itm/GCG-PAM-ANDERSON-Cards-Sports-Time-PlayBoy-1996-CARD-n-13-/171149797227?hash=item27d952a76b

[Bud]

 Quite embarrassing to Lecroy. Guess it was found too quick. 

[EEVblog]

Quite embarrassing to Lecroy.

I've let them know on Twitter 
Will be interested to see if they:
a) Not say a word
b) Have a laugh
c) Go into full PR crisis mode and disavow all ownership of this and how it is not inline with their corporate culture blah blah

[GK]

Oh dear, this reminds me of the novelty of turning 18 and finally being able to walk out of a newsagent with a girly mag. Jezus, I just rummaged through my box of old school books and stuff and I've still got this Pamela Anderson poster stashed away. I vaguely recall settling a bet with a mate with this poster who was convinced up until that point that her "platinum" blonde hair was totally natural, LOL (there wasn't any argument over the boobs).

[james_s]

Oh dear, this reminds me of the novelty of turning 18 and finally being able to walk out of a newsagent with a girly mag. Jezus, I just rummaged through my box of old school books and stuff and I've still got this Pamela Anderson poster stashed away. I vaguely recall settling a bet with a mate with is poster who was convinced up until that point that her "platinum" blonde hair was totally natural, LOL (there wasn't any argument over the boobs).

Funny, for some reason once I turned 18, those magazines suddenly lost most of their appeal and I never actually bought one. The attraction was all in the forbidden aspect when we relied on someone finding his dad's stash.

Also the internet came along, it's hard *not* to find girly pictures when looking around online.

[Bud]

Guess Lecroy is experimenting with subconscious methods to add sex appeal to their products. 

[Russ]

Guess Lecroy is experimenting with subconscious methods to add sex appeal to their products. 

Competitive market. Just another marketing ploy. 👍

[MWisBest]

Also the internet came along, it's hard *not* to find girly pictures when looking around online.

As evidenced by this very thread. 

[darkstar49]

This came out already a while ago...   
But there's no 100% evidence whether this is to be put to Lecroy's or Wind River's credit... ??

[sstepane]

Funny enough it requires some hand job to open the picture of Pamela

[mikeselectricstuff]

If the image is in there, maybe there is some obscure way to make it appear onscreen - seems a bit too obscure for it to have been left for someone to find in the firmware file.
Is there unzip and jpeg display functionality in the code? Any pointers to the image data ?

[Kjelt]

One sw engineer that was inspired by the Apple  team that hid their team picture in the code.
I did not know that Pamela worked for LeCroy 

We had also an incident with one of our products.
Some debug info that should never be seen popped up at a customer.
It was not offensive but still quite embarrassing.
The sw engineer was fired for this, in the code review it was not found because he put it after a comment line on the same line behind the 120th column and he made a small change in the comment.
The code reviewers only see the first 120 characters and thought the change was the comment change.
So it was a deliberate act of hiding which cost him his job.

Warning for young players: management usually does not think eastereggs are funny 

[Fungus]

I did not know that Pamela worked for LeCroy 

Yes, she was an Intern there before she got into modelling.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Anderson#Intern_Lecroy

[wraper]

I did not know that Pamela worked for LeCroy 

Yes, she was an Intern there before she got into modelling.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Anderson#Intern_Lecroy

I'd don't see anything about Lecroy or any internship.

[tszaboo]

I did not know that Pamela worked for LeCroy 

Yes, she was an Intern there before she got into modelling.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Anderson#Intern_Lecroy

I'd don't see anything about Lecroy or any internship.

It is Wikipedia, feel free to add the missing info.

[SeanB]

Plenty of the free service manuals also have a rather 'interesting" background image on them as well.  When printing them I just unselect the printing of the background, as a mono version of the translucent colour watermark is not exactly usable and obscures the info you want.

Some of the images in some countries could land you in trouble with the secular police though, seeing as there is a lot more than ankles exposed.

[nctnico]

I'd don't see anything about Lecroy or any internship.

It is Wikipedia, feel free to add the missing info.

But what would that section say? Some men adore her so much that they hid pictures of her in the firmware of test equipment?