Joe Grand’s Hardware Hacking Basics + Bonus Day!

TIME: 09:00 to 17:00 ICT/GMT+7

Interested in hardware hacking, but don’t know where to start? This class, taught by world-renowned engineer and hacker Joe Grand, teaches fundamental hardware hacking concepts and techniques used to reverse engineer and defeat the security of electronic devices. 

This comprehensive training covers product teardown, component identification, circuit board reverse engineering, soldering and desoldering, signal monitoring and analysis, and memory extraction, using a variety of tools including a logic analyzer, multimeter, and device programmer. It concludes with a final challenge where you’ll identify, reverse engineer, and defeat the security mechanism of a custom embedded system. No prior hardware, electronics, or security experience is required.

The bonus day allows for exploring more advanced techniques, including fault injection/glitching, side channel attacks, and hardware espionage. 

Through Joe’s unique teaching style and relevant hands-on exercises, you’ll not only gain the technical skills to explore, manipulate, and exploit electronic devices, but also the understanding of how to apply your skills against other hardware once you leave the classroom.

Student will be provided with:

• Course presentation on USB thumb drive
• Custom training circuit board
• Hardware implant (O.MG DemonSeed EDU)

Agenda

Day 1:

• Hardware Hacking Overview
• Information Gathering
• Product Teardown
  • Opening housings
    • Product assembly/disassembly methods
    • Anti-tamper mechanisms
    • Hands-on exercise: Defeat epoxy encapsulation
  • Component identification
    • Discrete components
    • Integrated circuits
    • Finding and reading data sheets
    • Hands-on exercise: Identify target components
• Schematics and PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards)
  • Creating/reading schematics
  • PCB construction/fabrication methods
  • Hands-on exercise: Modify target PCB
• Soldering and Desoldering
  • Tips/techniques
  • Hands-on exercise: Soldering
  • Hands-on exercise: Desoldering
• Buses and Interfaces
  • Identifying interfaces
  • Determining pin function
    • Hands-on exercise: Measurements w/ multimeter
    • Hands-on exercise: Create block diagram/schematic

Day 2:

• Buses and Interfaces (continued)
  • Signal monitoring/analysis
    • Tools/techniques
    • Serial communications interfaces (UART, I2C, SPI)
    • Hands-on exercise: Signal monitoring w/ logic analyzer
    • Hands-on exercise: Digital decoding w/ logic analyzer
    • Hands-on exercise: Interactive console via UART
• Signal/Data Manipulation
  • Tools/techniques/examples
  • Debug interfaces (vendor-specific, JTAG)
• Memory and Firmware
  • Memory types
  • Hands-on exercise: Extract/modify data from EEPROM
  • Security/code protection bypass examples
  • Firmware analysis tools/techniques
• Hardware Hacking Challenge
  • Apply the knowledge and skills learned to defeat the security mechanism of a custom electronic device.

Day 3: BONUS MATERIAL

• Side Channel Attacks
  • Hands-on exercise: Discover side channel weakness on a custom circuit board, defeat PIN protection via timing attack
• Hardware Implants
  • Hands-on exercise: Build a keystroke-injection hardware implant, experiment with various payloads
• Covert Channels/Data Exfiltration
  • Hands-on exercise: Discover covert channel on a custom circuit board, capture/decode exfiltrated data
• Fault Injection/Glitching
  • Hands-on exercise: Extract program code from a protected microcontroller via voltage glitch using the ChipWhisperer