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

Continuing system exploration – identifying and putting components in the diagram

We will power on the system as described in the manual; that is, we'll insert the required number of batteries and boot the system.

Start interacting with it, learn where the sensors are, try to feel around to see where certain things are, look for where the screws are, and get a general feeling for the system.

Opening the Furby

From now on, it is recommended that you do the following:

  • Be smart and take precautions – you will be dealing with pointy, sharp, and other objects that can hurt you. At the end of the day, you will only be losing 30 seconds of your life and sparing yourself a trip to E.R.
  • Take note of which screw goes where. Put all screws, bits, nuts, bolts, and pieces in a nice bowl, magnetic recipient, or sorting tray if available.
  • Document as much as possible and take pictures of everything (the higher the definition, the better). You will forget...