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Browsing Archives of Author »Stephen Ridley«

Why Writing Firmware Is Kinda Like Software Exploitation

March 22, 2014

We’ve been away too long. We’re slacking…well not really. (Lawler did an excellent post recently on Power Analysis attacks , but we’re still slowly catching up on the blog…) We’ve just been busy… we’ve been doing quite a bit of embedded reverse engineering and vulnerability research consultation recently (in addition to your normal infosec stuff). […]

A new Course: “Software Exploitation via Hardware Exploitation”

January 31, 2014

For the last couple of years we’ve been teaching Practical ARM Exploitation. It’s sold out at every public offering (CanSecWest 2012 and BlackHat 2012 & 2013) and we’ve been fortunate enough to give it privately to a number of really amazing organizations. In 2011 we did a talk entitled “Hardware Hacking For Software People” at […]

Flush()ing the queue for 2014

January 31, 2014

Now that the “Android Hackers Handbook” is a wrap and off to the printers, I (Ridley) have been flushing the queue on the last 1.5 years worth of incomplete blogposts. We’ve posted a few here and there, but not nearly as many as we started and didn’t finish. So, for the last few days I […]

The USB Condom

September 12, 2013

So a while back, @drakkhen and I were chatting and he suggested a simple device that would let him “airgap” his mobile devices from his computer but still use them for power. Like a “Charge-Only” USB cable but in an “adapter” form that you could use on normal USB Cables (the only previous alternative was […]

Reykjavík, Iceland (Nordic Sec Conference)

August 27, 2013

We took our “ARM Exploitation” course to Iceland at the request of old friends. We’ve long admired some of the Iceland guys, so we decided to go. NordicSec was a small conference but pretty dense in talent/skill. Our class was small but that was to be expected. It was great though to see so many […]

Int3.cc: Tools for the Talented

July 31, 2013

For the last few years on this blog we’ve been publishing more and more about embedded systems. We started with “Disassembling Blackberry Apps” which (to this day) we still get emails about thanking us for the disassembler patches we released. A few years back as Ridley was getting into “hardware hacking” and attacking embedded systems […]

Infiltrate 2013: “Miami…Joeboy…Quick study”

May 25, 2013

“Case turned on the tensor beside the Hosaka. The crisp circle of light fell directly on the Flatline’s construct. He slotted some ice, connnected the construct, and jacked in. It was exactly the sensation of someone reading over his shoulder. He coughed. “Dix? McCoy? That you man?” His throat was tight. “Hey, bro,” said a directionless […]

Upcoming for 2013

April 26, 2013

We haven’t done posts in a while. We’ve had quite few in the magazine for some time now, but have done a poor job of doing updates. We’ve been really busy lately but wanted to let folks know what we plan to do for more of 2013. So far this year we taught ARM Exploitation […]

ARM Exploitation Tokyo: Hacking in the Land of the Rising Sun

February 3, 2013

In mid 2012 we received an email from several folks in Japan asking us if we intended to bring our “ARM Exploitation” course from Blackhat Las Vegas 2012 to Asia. We had originally planned to do our class elsewhere in Asia but our work schedules conflicted pretty dramatically and we were unable to make it happen. But Japan in the New Year […]

ARM TechCon 2012

November 15, 2012

In October (on the heels of our recent ARM Exploitation Research) we were invited to speak at ARMTechCon, one of the largest Microprocessor conferences in the world. It was held at Santa Clara Convention Center in California. We were asked to speak there and sit on an “expert panel” on the security of “Real-World” devices. […]