Hi.
I'm Matt Lloyd Davis, and in this course,
Specialized Attacks: Hardware Product Testing,
I'll teach you how to access a device's firmware,
analyze it,
and then reverse engineer it to identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
This is just one small part of the hardware product testing cycle,
but it's a great place to start if you want to develop and
broaden your penetration testing skills.
Unlike traditional penetration testing which focuses
mostly on network and application attacks,
hardware product testing tends to focus more on
physical interactions with devices.
This can lead to the identification of weaknesses or vulnerabilities in
associated apps or network protocols as we'll see later in this course, but the
approach to hardware product testing usually involves dismantling a device and
then identifying and interacting with low‑level data and debug interfaces that
can be accessed via the circuit board.
Hardware product testing can determine if it's
possible to extract sensitive data,
such as passwords or encryption keys from flash
storage or as it traverses a bus,
gain privileged access within the software running on the target device,
or compromise another device not directly under our control.
The range of products we might test is boundless,
smart homes, smart vehicles, smart grids,
and smart cities, the Internet of Things,
the Industrial Internet of Things, and even the Enterprise of Things.
All of these devices are potential targets for attackers,
and therefore,
can benefit from testing to identify and mitigate
vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
Many of these devices use cloud‑based applications for user interaction.
This provides an opportunity for an attacker to gain access to devices or
networks to steal information or to install malware.
The real value of smart devices is their ability to
communicate in a wide variety of ways, whether that's via Wi‑Fi,
Bluetooth, near field communication, GSM,
or SMS.
Each of these communication protocols has known weaknesses or
vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an attacker to eavesdrop
or gain access to a device or network.
Whilst networks, applications,
and communication protocols are legitimate areas for
investigation during a penetration test,
this course will focus on the physical layer directly interacting
with the device's circuitry and finding device configuration data
and other sensitive information.
Given that we've said we need physical access to a device,
let's take a look at what we might find.