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

Technical requirements

In order to be able to program and use the bluepill, it is essential to have the following:

  • A bluepill board (I'd advise you to buy a few, as they are always useful; search for bluepill stm32f103 on any bidding site).
  • A breadboard.
  • An STLINK USB stick: This looks like a USB stick with pins on the side opposite to the USB connector.
  • A few wires for connections.

For the examples, you will require the following:

  • Protocol: I2C: Chip: A PDIP 24LC I2C EEPROM
  • Protocol: SPI: Chip: An MX25L8008 flash on a DIP breakout
  • Protocol: UART: Any USB-to-serial adapter (the cheap ones based on CP2102 will do the job perfectly and they are useful tools too. Ordering more than one is a great idea; you need at least two)
  • Protocol: Dallas 1-Wire: Chip: A DS18B20 (a temperature sensor)

You may want to also buy or find components that are using the same protocol but that are slightly different, so as to train yourself in adapting...