IoT Penetration Testing Cookbook

Device basics

Device hardware starts with the Printed Circuit Board (PCB), which is comprised of fiberglass, copper, the solder mask, silkscreen, traces, and pads. Components such as resistors, capacitors, chips for Wi-Fi, EEPROMs, and serial and microcontrollers are soldered onto the PCB. There are various layers of thin copper foil that make a PCB conductive and also insulated layers that make it non-conductive. It's important to identify components of interest when looking at a PCB. Components of interest include sources of input into the device firmware either directly or indirectly. Components such as the EEPROM, NAND flash, Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART), and Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) are some of the most common ...