On October 1st and 2nd Flo and I were presenting at
hardwear.io in The Hague, NL. My topic was “Living in a fool’s
wireless-secured paradise” and Flo was presenting his current research
on medical device security. It was the first talk at an international
security conference for me and I am still quite excited!
I was speaking about the (in)security of wireless consumer alarm
systems, which you can buy just in every consumer electronics store
around the corner for about $10 – $250. I analyzed the systems on
different levels, e.g. looking at UART and JTAG and the wireless domain
with Software Defined Radio (SDR). I gave an overview of my current
research and the tools I usually use for hardware hacking, especially my
favorite thing to play with: SDR.
The con was cool with nearly 200 people attending – much more than
expected by the hosts. Perfect start for the first Hardwear.io!
The talks focused on in-depth technical aspects of hardware security.
That is an aspect I miss at many other cons. Another thing worth
mentioning is the badge: As you can see at the picture, the badge was a “Hardware Bug”.
Flo and I enjoyed it and we are looking forward to the next year’s
hardwear.io! Thank you guys, we hope to see you at Troopers16!
The slides can be found here:
Hey!
With SDR nearly everything is possible – depending on your knowledge and hardware. Using SDR, it would be possible to rebuild the Stacks used for wirelesss communication, e.g. Bluetooth; although this would be a real big deal.
Easier is playing around with wireless thingies in SubGHz band, which means mostly the ISM band; e.g. in Europe ~433MHz and ~868MHz, where you could find transmissions from keyfobs for garage doors or also the wireless alarm systems, I mentioned in my talk. Receiving them would possible with every hardware you could read about above.
IMHO hardware is not too expensive, for what it’s possible with. The HackRF One from Great Scott Gadgets costs about $300 with 20MHz of bandwith and a frequency range from 1MHz – 6GHz. The HackRF Blue, which is afaik the cheapest SDR on the market by now, costs about $200.
For start playing around with SDR you could even buy a DVB-T USB-Dongle. This solution would cost about $10-20 with a bandwith of 2MHz, what’s enough for most communications. Frequency Range would be from ~100MHz – ~2GHz. Yep, this is receive only, but nice to get hands on. For transmission you could use modules for e.g. Arduino, which cost under $10.
Best,
Stefan