A Cricut Maker found in e-waste came back to life after a serial number spoofing trick

Hacker recently salvaged a Cricut Maker from an e-waste disposal pile. The machine appeared to be in decent shape, with only some perished rollers needing replacement. The real challenge was the lock: Cricut is known for remotely disabling devices when it sees fit.

Connecting the machine to Cricut's official software confirmed it was marked as "deactivated." The most likely cause is that the original owner received a warranty replacement, after which the old unit was locked out. The rollers were easy to swap, but the software lock required more effort.

Inspecting the motherboard revealed no obvious EEPROMs, and the microcontroller was unfamiliar to 's debugging tools. So she turned to USB traffic interception between the machine and the host PC. The analysis showed that the device transmits its serial number in plain text, with no checksums or encryption whatsoever.

The solution was to insert an RP2040 microcontroller between the Cricut Maker and the PC. The RP2040 relays packets between the two sides while spoofing the serial number in real time. This simple trick unlocked the machine, allowing it to function normally again. believes a software-only approach might also work, though she hasn't implemented one yet.