IOT Firmware Hacking (tutorial)

Hello everyone, today I will give a tutorial on IOT Firmware Hacking. I hope that you find this useful.

How to get the firmware

  • Vendors website
  • Support groups
  • Community forums
  • OTA update sniffing
  • Mobile application
  • Dumping from the device

Analyzing firmware

  • Analyze it via strings and hexdump
  • Is the firmware encrypted?
    • What kind of encryption is being used?
      • hexdump -C firmware.bin
      • strings firmware.bin
      • binwalk -E firmware.bin to figure out the entropy
    • Where can you find the encryption keys?
    • How can you get a copy of the decrypted firmware?
  • Extracting components from the firmware
    • Extract the file system ( binwalk -e firmware.bin )
    • Does the file system has hardcoded credentials ( grep is your friend)
      • API keys
      • Private certificates
      • Backdoors
      • Sensitive URLs
      • Config files revealing useful information
  • Emulating the firmware
    • Identify the architecture
    • Emulate the firmware using Qemu and Chroot or FAT ( python fat.py - FAT available from here )
    • Perform analysis and exploitation via emulation
  • Reverse engineering firmware binaries
    • Command Injection bugs (IDA analysis and looking at the web files)
    • Identifying Buffer overflows and other software binary specific vulns and exploitation
      • what all security protections are there in place?
      • Bypassing the security protections.
5 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 121 days. New replies are no longer allowed.