Talk on "Beginners guide to Hardware Hacking" by "Asutosh Kumar" at null/OWASP Kolkata Meetup on 27 January 2024

1. Beginner’s Guide to
Hardware Hacking
Asutosh Kumar

2. Asutosh Kumar (h4ckibl3)
Electronics Undegrad.
Noob , Learning everyday
Cyber Security Lead @bytelabs
Author @autosecurityy
Find me making memes for security
conferences
$ ./about-me.sh

3. Hardware != Iot

4. What is Hardware Hacking ?
Hardware hacking, in simple terms, refers to the
process of manipulating or modifying electronic
hardware to achieve a desired outcome that may not
have been originally intended by the manufacturer.
Hardware hacking can be done for various reasons,
including:
Customization
Exploration and Learning
Security Testing
Creating Unofficial Modifications

5. Fundamentals
Level - 1

6. Hardware Tools
Multimeter
A multimeter is like a detective tool for electronics. It helps us check and measure
things in circuits, like how much electricity is there (voltage), how hard it is for
electricity to flow (resistance), and whether the path for electricity is clear (continuity).
It's like a super-spy for understanding and fixing electrical stuff!
Soldering Kit / Desoldering Pump
Screwdriver Set
Wires/Jumper Wires
Vise Stand
Brain !!

7. Basic Electronics
1. Resistor: It adds resistance between two components. It is measured in ohms.
2. Capacitor: It charges and discharges in specific interval of time and used to stabilize the power supply in Circuit. It is
measured in farad.
3. Inductors: They are used for filtering and smoothing high-frequency noise in the circuit using electromagnetic
discharge. It is measured in Henry.
4. IC: Integrated Circuits is a set of electronic circuits on small pieces of silicon.
5. EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory): Embedded devices use these as a means of storage.
6. Transformers: They are used to convert voltage levels. Mostly used for converting AC mains to DC supply with some
extra circuitry.
7. Microcontroller/Microprocessor: It is a tiny little computer on a single metal-oxidesemiconductor (MOS) integrated
circuit (IC) chip.
8. SoC (System on Chip): They can be just a Processor or Processor + memory + peripherals.
9. Transistor,Battery,PCB

8. Packages
Through Hole Mount Package
Surface Mount Package

9. ? ?
Bored ????

10. through-hole surface-mount
Bored ????

11. Where to mount all this stuff ?
PCB (Printed Circuit Board)

12. Recon Time

13. DLINK DIR-806 IN

14. External Inspection
Buttons
Ports , Sd card slot
Fcc id
Why i shared this image here ?
JMR 540/Jio fi 3

15. Internal Inspection
PCB Board analysis
Datasheets
Debug ports (UART,JTAG
SPI & I2C)
Pinouts

17. UART

18. UART
UART(Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter) is one of the most often used communication
protocols in embedded devices. It converts the parallel data it receives into a serial bit stream of
data that may possibly be interacted with more easily. The transmitting UART translates parallel
data from a controlling device, such as a CPU, into serial data, which it then sends in serial to the
receiving UART. Which turns the serial data back into parallel for the receiving device.
serial communication with two wire protocol
no ACK protocol
easiest and simple way to transfer data directly to and from microcontrollers without the need
of any device in between

19. UART
Transmitting UART converts parallel data into serial and transmits
Receiving UART converts received serial data into parallel
Possible Attacks
Getting root shell
Smiffing comm.

20. What we need to know and do ?
Pin Identification (GND,VCC,TX,RX)
Baudrate (9600,11400)
Pin Identification
Manual Identification
Automated Identification

21. Identifying GND
power off the device , set the multimeter to conitinuity
red probe on the pins , black probe on any metallic surface
if it beeps boom , you got the gnd
Identifying VCC
power on the device , set the multimeter to voltage test
red probe on the pins , black probe on the gnd i.e. ground.
if it shows a voltage around 3.3v it’s vcc

22. Identifying Tx
power on the device , set the multimeter to voltage test
immediate test required
red probe on the pins , black probe on the mettalic surface
if it shows a changing voltage it’s tx
Identifying Rx
i want to learn this from you guyz :)

23. Getting Access
Access the port via /dev/ttyUSB0
Power on the device and run a serial console utility
Screen / Minicom
screen - screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200
minicom - minicom -b 9600 -D /dev/ttyUSB0
-b (baudrate) , -D (device)
wait for a while and you got the access , try further expoiting it if you want to in
this premises nothing is allowed.

25. Special thanks to Null And Owasp Kolkata
Arindam Halder
Souvik Roy
Tanmay Bhattacharjee
Soummya Mukhopadhyay