Introduction

The phrase "hardware hacking" can mean different things to different people. For some, hardware hacking may be related to telephone experimentation, lock picking, or setting up model railroad systems. In our case, hardware hacking is defined as modifying hardware appliances or electronic products to perform functions for which they were not originally intended. This could mean anything from a simple software replacement to a complicated electrical circuit attack.

Just about any piece of electronic equipment can serve as a candidate for hardware hacking. Particularly of interest to us are Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile telephones, and hardware authentication devices (such as dongles, token cards, biometric devices, and smart cards). Other common targets are any devices that are network-enabled and have embedded cryptographic functionality, such as routers, switches, virtual private networks (VPNs), and cryptographic accelerators.

This chapter focuses on hacking electronic hardware devices to gain a security advantage. This limits the discussion to security-related hardware devices that are designed to store sensitive information (such as cryptographic components or secret data) or that have some physical feature designed to make them harder to attack (such as epoxy encapsulation).

Hardware hacking requires a completely different cache of tools from the rest of this book: hardware hacking requires physical tools. This chapter covers the background and process of hardware hacking, tools and other resources that will aid in your endeavors, and a few real-world examples.

Understanding Hardware Hacking

Depending on your goals, what and how you choose to attack will vary. Generally, hardware...