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Hardware Hacking 101 – Lesson 1: Beauty, Your Home Lab and Basic Electronics

EH-Net - Sindermann - Hardware Hacking 101 - Lesson 1Hardware hacking is one of those subjects that a lot of hackers appear to have great interest, but most don’t act on that interest. There are a variety of reasons why this may be such as a perceived steep learning curve, financial barrier to entry, and lack of applicability. I’m here to say that these reasons are silly. Hardware hacking can be cheap and easy! And, more importantly, adding hardware hacking to your repertoire of skills can be quite advantageous. Nothing has made this more clear to me than some of the comments I’ve received from other hackers. Here’s a few gems:

  • “How do you have root already? You haven’t even had the device for half an hour.”
  • “It shouldn’t be able to broadcast that… Can you unlock mine, too?”
  • “Why does your keyboard have a rave light?”

But, most alarmingly, a lot of the comments are along the lines of “I could never do that.” Yes you can! And, if you stick around a bit, I’ll prove it. Throughout this series, we’ll work our way from noob’s first LED swap all the way to dumping secrets from a destroyed IoT device. Any and all ages and experience levels are welcome.

The Beauty of Hardware Hacking

From my potentially ever-so-slightly biased perspective, hardware hacking has a few key features that make it rather special. Much like normal hacking, the possibilities are endless. We’re surrounded by hardware, hardware we can hack! …if we have permission, of course. Whether it be something as simple as changing an obnoxiously bright LED or something as complex as dumping, patching, and re-flashing firmware, there’s always an opportunity to hack something. One of the things that makes hardware hacking different from normal hacking is the hands-on nature of the work, and I’m (Read more...)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The Ethical Hacker Network authored by Ian Sindermann. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/eh-net/~3/hbP7691qQog/