Make Me Hack

Hardware Hacking, Reverse Engineering and more …

This web site was started to complement the YouTube channel Make Me Hack and includes information, tutorials, description of tools and techniques for hacking and reverse engineering hardware devices.

How to change the TX frequency of the Vaisala RS41 Radiosonde

The Vaisala RS41 and RS41-SG are, currently, among the most popular Radiosonde attached to the weather balloons that are regularly launched by many different weather forecast agencies.

The radiosonde is an interesting device that has, onboard, few sensors used to get weather-related information as temperature, pressure, humidity, GPS, and some other sensors. It has also a low power TX transmitter to transmit continuously the sensor data and the GPS position.

It is usually not so difficult to find one through “radiosonde chasing”.… Read the rest

Posted by Valerio on December 19, 2020, 4 comments

How To Run An Old Toolchain with Docker

I released the eighth episode of the series Hardware Hacking Tutorial in the Make Me Hack YouTube channel.
This episode is about “How To Run An Old Toolchain with Docker”.

The Hardware Hacking Tutorial series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

We want to build a kernel and a root file system for a QEMU emulated board, where to run interesting binaries of our IoT device, but our device has a very old kernel, libraries, and packages.… Read the rest

How To Emulate Firmware With QEMU

I released the seventh episode of the series Hardware Hacking Tutorial in the Make Me Hack YouTube channel.
This episode is about “How To Emulate Firmware With QEMU”.

The Hardware Hacking Tutorial series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

If you have successfully identified some interesting executable binary in the firmware file of your device, and if you want to run it or reverse engineer it in a debugging friendly, reverse-engineering friendly, emulation environment, this is the video for you!… Read the rest

Startup Scripts and The Quest For Root

I released the sixth episode of the series Hardware Hacking Tutorial in the Make Me Hack YouTube channel.
This episode is about “Startup Scripts & The Quest For Root”.

The Hardware Hacking Tutorial series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

If you have successfully extracted the root file system from the firmware file of your device, and if you want to understand what your device does after booting, and if there is an easy way to log in as root, this is the video for you!… Read the rest

How To Get The Root File System

I released the fifth episode of the series Hardware Hacking Tutorial in the Make Me Hack YouTube channel.
This episode is about “How To Get The Root File System”.

The Hardware Hacking Tutorial series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

If you have downloaded the firmware file for your device from the supplier’s website or if you have dumped the EEPROM from your device and you want to extract the root file system and other information, this is the video for you!… Read the rest

How To Get The Firmware

I released the fourth episode of the series Hardware Hacking Tutorial in the Make Me Hack YouTube channel. This episode is about “How To Get The Firmware”.

The Hardware Hacking Tutorial series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

If you are struggling to get the firmware out of your device, this is the video for you!

In this video I will explain the possible ways we can use to to get the firmware of our IoT device.… Read the rest

How to Find The JTAG Interface

I released the third episode of the series Hardware Hacking Tutorialin the Make Me Hack YouTube channel. This episode is about “How To Find The JTAG Interface”.

The Hardware Hacking Tutorial series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

In this video I will introduce the JTAG interface, an interface that you can find on almost all of your IoT devices like routers, webcams, electronic toys, TV remotes and so on.… Read the rest

How To Find The UART Interface

I released the second episode of the series Hardware Hacking Tutorialin the Make Me Hack YouTube channel. This episode is about “How To Find The UART Interface”.

The Hardware Hacking Tutorial series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

In this episode I will talk about how the find tue UART interface on an IoT device; I will take an home router (Gemtek WVRTM-127ACN) and show how to find the UART interface using simple tools like a multi-meter and using more advanced tools like a JTagulator board.… Read the rest

Hardware Hacking: Identifying Components

I started the Make Me Hack channel with the series Hardware Hacking Tutorial and with the first episode about Identifying Components.

This series is to share information on how to do hardware hacking and how to do reverse engineering. The series is useful both for beginners and experts.

Hardware Hacking will be described with practical hacking activities on real devices following a process based on:

  1. Information gathering of hardware and software
  2. Building an emulation environment where to run interesting binaries and reverse engineer them, if needed
  3. Analyzing how the device works
  4. Hack the device and modify its firmware

In this first episode we will talk about how to identify the device, the manufacturer and the Original Design Manufacturer and how to identify the integrated circuits inside the device using some tips to read part numbers when they seems unreadable.… Read the rest

Introduction to IoT Reverse Engineering

The YouTube channel Make Me Hack has not started yet, in the mean time the following talk, that I gave at “Hack In Paris 2019”, provides a glimpse at the arguments I will talk about in the YouTube channel.

Presentation

GitHub repositories related to the Home Router Example

  • adbtools2: tools for hacking ADB Epicentro routers (the example home router), including firmware modification kit and VOIP password recovery;
  • Buildroot-armv7: a set of scripts, configuration files and Buildroot external tree to setup a Qemu emulation environment to run and reverse engineer the Netgear DVA 5592 executables.
… Read the rest

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta