Testing your IoT Devices

As our physical world continues to merge with the virtual world, we see more internet connected devices becoming (vital) components of our daily lives. From a consumer perspective this advancement in technology and IoT devices make life easier.
However, unless these devices have been properly tested and assessed, it creates multiple new attack vectors which can be exploited to make the lives of hackers easier.
HackersHub has multiple consultants specialized in IoT and hardware testing to ensure that any products your organization develop are substantially more secure.
We understand that companies are racing to develop these devices as fast as possible in order to compete with their competitors or to be first to market. The only problem is that developing these devices as fast as possible normally means that simple secure coding techniques are overlooked during development.
That’s where we come in, we can assess these devices before they are brought to the market without any significant delay in the development.

Examples of devices we test

  • Industrial Control Systems
    • Classic Scada Systems
    • Advanced Control Sensors
  • Smart Home Devices
    • Smart Door Locks
    • Smart Thermostats
    • Complete Home Solutions
    • White Goods
    • Smart TVs to Smart Vacuum Cleaners
  • Medical Devices
    • Personal Smart Medical Devices
    • Commercial Medical Devices
  • Wearable Tech
  • Retail Related IoT devices
  • Any device with connectivity functionality

Methodology

Depending on the device we are testing the methodology might vary, but below we illustrate our standardized methodology when dealing with hardware devices.

Mapping the Attack Surface

As mentioned above, these devices create a larger attack surface for attackers. That’s why we will conduct our penetration test with mapping the new attack surface that the device creates.


Firmware Reverse Engineering

  • Reverse engineering of the firmware binaries
  • Analysis of used firmware encryption and obfuscation techniques
  • Static and dynamics analysis of the firmware binaries
  • Analysis of third party libraries in use
  • Manual search through the unpacked binaries to gather sensitive info

Hardware Based Exploitation

  • Assessing the hardware to determine used communication protocols.
  • Serial debugging and exploitation
  • Dump the firmware from the device
  • Verification of the security features included in the hardware

Client Side and Back-End Vulnerabilities

  • Assessment of vulnerabilities in the web based dashboard according to the OWASP standard
  • Mobile application security issues identification and exploitation for Android and iOS - Platform related security issues, App reversing, Binary instrumentation techniques to gain sensitive information etc.
  • API based security issues such as unauthenticated end-points or hardcoded API keys in the mobile applications

Wireless Communication Security Analysis

  • Assessment of radio communication protocols in use
  • Sniffing the radio packets being transmitted and received
  • Modifying and replaying the packets for device takeover attacks
  • Jamming based attacks
  • Radio communication reversing for proprietary protocols
  • Attacking protocol specific vulnerabilities
  • Exploiting communication protocols through known vulnerabilities and incorrect implementations

Reporting

  • At this point our consultants will create an in-depth report detailing all the vulnerabilities found, how to reproduce them, their associated risk level and our recommended remediation.
  • Peer review - All of our reports will be peer reviewed by one other senior consultant who will recheck the findings of the primary consultant to ensure a higher level of quality.

Retesting

  • Once all vulnerabilities have been remedied, we will have the primary consultant reassess to ensure that all the vulnerabilities are not present anymore and to ensure that no new vulnerabilities have been introduced.

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