Book Image

Practical Hardware Pentesting

By : Jean-Georges Valle
Book Image

Practical Hardware Pentesting

By: Jean-Georges Valle

Overview of this book

If you’re looking for hands-on introduction to pentesting that delivers, then Practical Hardware Pentesting is for you. This book will help you plan attacks, hack your embedded devices, and secure the hardware infrastructure. Throughout the book, you will see how a specific device works, explore the functional and security aspects, and learn how a system senses and communicates with the outside world. You’ll set up a lab from scratch and then gradually work towards an advanced hardware lab—but you’ll still be able to follow along with a basic setup. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with the global architecture of an embedded system and sniff on-board traffic, learn how to identify and formalize threats to the embedded system, and understand its relationship with its ecosystem. You’ll discover how to analyze your hardware and locate its possible system vulnerabilities before going on to explore firmware dumping, analysis, and exploitation. The reverse engineering chapter will get you thinking from an attacker point of view; you’ll understand how devices are attacked, how they are compromised, and how you can harden a device against the most common hardware attack vectors. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with security best practices and understand how they can be implemented to secure your hardware.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting to Know the Hardware
6
Section 2: Attacking the Hardware
12
Section 3: Attacking the Software

Sending it back

If your hardware supports it, you can record a sample file with a file sink. This can easily be played back using your device as a sink instead of a source (file source -> Osmocom sink GNU Radio block for hackrf, for example). Just be sure that you are keeping the same sampling rate! You can also create modulated signals from Python (or any programming language) to send arbitrary signals.

Before sending anything, be sure to check the following:

  • Check that it is legal in your country depending on the frequency (on 2.4 GHz, it is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_band) if you respect the on-air time).
  • That you are not disturbing other receivers around you. Be very wary of the strength of the signal you are sending!

    You can use a Faraday cage (a metallic container to isolate radio signals) for most of your tests by using a discarded microwave (for 2.4 GHz) or find/build one yourself for cheap (ammo cans, a big metallic paint pot with a few holes for the...