It's Assembler, Jim, but not as we know it: (ab)using binaries from embedded devices for fun and profit

The presentation discusses the importance of reconnaissance and automation in reverse engineering and hardware hacking.

• Reconnaissance is crucial in hardware hacking and reverse engineering
• Automation tools like binwalk and photorec can be useful in the process
• Qemu is a useful tool for emulating hardware and running OS on different architectures
• Creativity is important in finding ways to attack systems
• Hardware engineers have built interesting devices that can be exploited
• A paperclip can be used to induce failure and bypass security measures

The speaker shares a story about intercepting communications between two sides of a PlayStation 4 attack by running PCIe over a UART at 9600 baud to watch each frame visually as it went through their entire system.

With the proliferation of Linux-based SoCs -- you've likely got one or two in your house, on your person or in your pocket -- it is often useful to look "under the hood" at what is running; Additionally, in-situ debugging may be unavailable due to read-only filesystems, memory is often limited, and other factors keep us from attacking a live device. This talk looks at attacking binaries outside their native environment using QEMU, the Quick Emulator, as well as techniques for extracting relevant content from devices and exploring them.