Cheap and Nasty: Hacking the $5 Ritmo CE-3590 NAS Part 2

So after poking around with the bootloader, I decided to go look for the stock firmware to see if I could upload that with some modifications so I could play around with the stock system.

After a night of Googling, I couldn’t find any links to the original firmware. I tried to discover if I could download the firmware from the NAS, but that didn’t get me anywhere either. All the Googling did point me in the direction of SnakeOS however, which is replacement firmware for some NASes. However, it hadn’t been maintained in quite a few years so I was initially a bit hesitant.

Instead, I looked into installing Debian onto the NAS, but according to the documentation Debian ARMEL needs an ARMv4t processor, and the NAS only has an ARMv4 processor, so it looks like I’m out of luck there.

After Debian, it looked like my options were either SnakeOS, or custom build a Linux distro to put onto the NAS.

I decided to go with the SnakeOS option, as it was the more time efficient option. Installing SnakeOS was a simple matter of downloading the “from-original” firmware file from the project page, and installing it using the built in Firmware Updater on the NAS. The update took a fair few minutes, so let it sit for a while when you update it.

After updating it, the NAS booted up with a new MAC address, so I had to update my DHCP leases with the new MAC address to make sure it kept the same IP address.

Logging into the Web UI is done in the same manner, except the default password is now snake.

Snake OS WebUI

Once you’ve logged in, you can then configure the NAS to your liking.
SnakeOS has a built in SSH server, so I no longer need to use the serial console to access the NAS.

Much simpler than trying to hack it manually, but also a lot less fun 🙁

Now that I have root access to the NAS, I may try to add functionality onto it as I need it. Stay tuned for more!