Introduction
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Imagine owning an IoT device like a router, smart light, or Wi-Fi camera and wanting to investigate its security. Your first instinct might be to scan for open ports, services, or web server vulnerabilities. But what if these software-based attack vectors reveal nothing? Is the game over? Not at all! While the software might be secure, the hardware often tells a different story. Debug ports can be abused to gain root shells, firmware can be dumped from microchips, and communication lines can be sniffed to uncover sensitive data.
Hardware hacking offers a deeper layer of exploration beyond traditional software-based security testing. Devices often have physical interfaces and chips that store critical data, such as credentials or encryption keys, that attackers might exploit. Even if software vulnerabilities are absent, the hardware can often be a treasure trove of opportunities for bypassing security mechanisms.
By mastering hardware hacking, you can:
Discover vulnerabilities that software tests cannot reveal.
Extract valuable insights by dumping firmware or accessing memory directly.
Understand and manipulate the low-level workings of IoT devices.
The primary goal of a hardware hacker is typically to gain full control of the device, escalating privileges and accessing sensitive data. For example:
Interactive Access
Obtaining an administrative shell that allows full control of the device.
Dumping the device's firmware, which contains all the code and secrets required for operation. This can reveal admin passwords, hardcoded credentials, or security flaws.
Firmware Modification
Reflashing a device with modified firmware to bypass restrictions or gain privileged access.
These allow direct communication with the device, often providing admin-level access if unsecured.
The content of this wiki has a top to button approach, so you can just follow the natural order of the content to start your deep dive into hardware hacking:
Check out the guide, which give you guidance on what target device to choose (if you don't have one already), what tools are needed for beginners and how to approach hardware hacking in general.
After opening the device, the first step is identifying key hardware components and interfaces. In the we describe in detail how to identify each component and how we can abuse it. A short summary:
Debug Interfaces (e.g., , )
Memory Chips (e.g., , EEPROM)
These store firmware and critical data, which can often be and analyzed.
Communication Lines (e.g.,, , )
Sniffing these can reveal unencrypted data in transit, such as credentials or sensitive commands. This can be done by using a .
Once the firmware or data is extracted, tools like , , and radare2 can help reverse-engineer the firmware, uncovering hardcoded secrets, encryption keys, or exploitable vulnerabilities.
Start by familiarizing yourself with essential hardware and software tools. Learn about devices like the Bus Pirate, JTAG adapters, and logic analyzers, as well as software like Ghidra and binwalk, which are critical for hardware hacking.
Discover how to enumerate a device and identify hardware interfaces. This chapter focuses on understanding and locating UART, JTAG, and SPI interfaces. Begin your journey with the Board Analysis section to learn how to inspect and analyze a device's hardware layout.
Found a debugging interface like JTAG or UART? This chapter will teach you how to interact with it to extract data, dump firmware, and explore the internal workings of the device.
Take your skills to the next level with advanced techniques for bypassing security mechanisms. Learn approaches to overcome challenges like read-out protections on chips and explore topics like side-channel attacks for deeper hardware penetration.
Once you’ve extracted firmware, this chapter guides you through analyzing it using tools like binwalk to uncover vulnerabilities, hardcoded secrets, and sensitive information.