Case study / Embedded penetration testing

IoT Device Penetration Testing

A simulated security audit of a purpose-built SoC training board using serial access, password cracking, flash dumping, undocumented stream analysis, and Ghidra reverse engineering.

Problem

Recover and understand embedded secrets

The target exposed multiple analysis paths, but required combining hardware-facing access, filesystem extraction, and binary reverse engineering.

Tools

UART, John, flash analysis, Ghidra

Used serial debugging, John the Ripper, internal/external flash dumping, and Ghidra to identify verification logic and hidden data.

Methodology

Initial accessCracked a password-protected serial debug shell.

Memory extractionDumped internal and external flash memory for offline review.

Data stream analysisIdentified an undocumented device data stream.

Reverse engineeringAnalyzed an obfuscated salt-and-hash verification mechanism in Ghidra.

OutcomeLocated a device-specific secret missed by standard analysis tooling.

Disclosure Note

This is presented at a professional level: target, methodology, findings, and remediation themes. Sensitive exploit artifacts are intentionally omitted where publication would be inappropriate.

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