In this post, we attack the Nest Hub (2nd Gen), an always-connected smart home display from Google, in order to boot a custom OS.

First, we explore both hardware and software attack surface in search of security vulnerabilities that could permit arbitrary code execution on the device.

Then, using a …

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In a previous post, we detailed a vulnerability in the Amlogic System-On-Chip bootROM that allows arbitrary code execution at EL3. Since the Chromecast with Google TV (CCwGTV) is one of the devices affected by this issue, it opens the possibility to run a custom OS like Ubuntu.

This post describes …

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This post describes how to dump bootROM from Amlogic S905D3 SoC using Khadas VIM3L board. Since this board doesn't use Secure Boot, we can execute custom code in Secure World (a.k.a TrustZone) without exploiting any vulnerability. In addition, the board exposes an UART connector, which is convenient for …

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In the previous post, we explained how to dump Exynos bootROM.

Exynos (8895 in this post) bootROM contains a minimal USB stack to load a signed bootloader from an USB host (a.k.a. boot from USB). This post summarizes how this USB stack can be reversed using the Great …

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QEMU has support for the SMDKC210 machine, an ARM board based on Exynos 4210 SoC. Peripherals implemented in QEMU for this machine are UART, SDHCI, FIMD, I2C, Interrupt Combiner, GIC, Clock, PMU, RNG, MCT, PWM, RTC.

Samsung Galaxy S2 phone is also based on Exynos 4210, so it should be …

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This article explains how to customize Nighthawk X4S firmware to add a security camera feature to this always-online & almost-always-idle device. Alternative firmwares like OpenWRT or LEDE exist, but they don't fully support all stock features yet. So instead this approach is based on modified stock firmware.

Main steps are:

• Customize …

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The Amlogic S905 System-On-Chip is an ARM processor designed for video applications. It's widely used in Android/Kodi media boxes. The SoC implements the TrustZone security extensions to run a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) that enables DRM & other security features :

Amlogic S905 System Block Diagram

The SoC contains a Secure …

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D-Link 1565 is one of the few routers which integrates a PLC (Power line Communication) chipset (in this case QCA AR7400). Unfortunately, OpenWrt does not provide support for this feature yet.

This post presents configuration steps to enable PLC support in OpenWrt for this device.

Hardware configuration

By digging into …

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This article will first describe how to locate the Monitor mode code in Nexus 5 firmware (hammerhead-ktu84p-factory-35ea0277, bootloader-hammerhead-hhz11k : c32f8bec310c659c1296739b00c6a8ac). Then, we will try to understand what it does (its functionalities). Finally, you will have to find bugs by yourself because I didn't find any...so far !

Note: Terms (Non-)Secure …

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This post is a translated summary of the article published for my talk at SSTIC 2014 conference (french).

My Philips Smart TV is a Linux box standing there in my living room : that's a sufficient reason to try to get root.

Debug serial port

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