Book Image

Practical Hardware Pentesting, Second edition - Second Edition

By : Jean-Georges Valle
Book Image

Practical Hardware Pentesting, Second edition - Second Edition

By: Jean-Georges Valle

Overview of this book

Practical Hardware Pentesting, Second Edition, is an example-driven guide that will help you plan attacks, hack your embedded devices, and secure the hardware infrastructure. Throughout the book, you’ll explore the functional and security aspects of a device and learn how a system senses and communicates with the outside world. You’ll set up a lab from scratch and gradually work towards an advanced hardware lab. The first part of this book will get you attacking the software of an embedded device. This will get you thinking from an attacker point of view; you’ll understand how devices are attacked, compromised, and how you can harden a device against the most common hardware attack vectors. 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. This 2nd Edition covers real-world examples featuring various devices like smart TVs, baby monitors, or pacemakers, you’ll discover how to analyze hardware and locate its possible vulnerabilities before going on to explore firmware dumping, analysis, and exploitation. By the end of this book, you’ll and understand how to implement best practices to secure your hardware.
Table of Contents (5 chapters)

Technical requirements

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

  • A board (I'd advise you to buy a few, as they are always useful.
  • Search for bluepill stm32f103 or blackpill stm32f411) on any bidding or cheap site (ebay, taobao, aliexpress)
  • 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 the...