Ken writes: In the Datapoint 2200, each memory board had 32 shift registers, providing 2K of storage. The processor board used a counter to keep track of the shift register position, and would stop processing until the right bits were available. (Kind of like a cache miss in modern processors.) I got a display board from […]
Tag Archives: reverse engineering
Reverse engineering a Verisure wireless alarm
Here’s an informative two-part series of posts over at FunOverIP detailing how to reverse engineer a Verisure wireless alarm. Part 1 details the beginning steps such as finding the modules radio frequency and modulation type, analyzing the chipset datasheet and using GNU Radio.
Reverse engineering a NAND flash device management algorithm
Joshua Wise writes: The following is a description of how I went about reverse-engineering the on-flash format, and of the conclusions that I came to. My efforts over the course of about a month and a half of solid work – and a “long tail” of another five months or so – resulted in a […]
Ghosts in the ROM
Ghosts in the ROM: While digging through dumps generated from the Apple Mac SE ROM images we noticed that there was a large amount of non-code, non-audio data. Adam Mayer tested different stride widths and found that at 67 bytes (536 pixels across) there appeared to be some sort of image data that clearly was […]
Radare2 open source reverse engineering software
Radare2 is an open source tool to disassemble, debug, analyze and manipulate binary files. Edd at Canthack has posted a detailed example demonstrating use of Radare2 to reverse shellcode. You may also want to check out the Radare talks and docs pages for more information on this tool. They have a 152 page book covering […]
The US wants YOU to help verify chip integrity
The US government’s intelligence community research arm, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency or IARPA, is responsible for verifying the integrity of chips procured by the government and destined for mission critical national security applications. They are well aware that foreign suppliers can adulterate the supply of mission critical chips in various ways, including designing […]
Hacking the PIC 18F1320
Andrew “Bunnie” Huang is well known for his Xbox hacks. He wanted to try out some reversing techniques on programmed PIC 18F1320 chips he acquired in order to read the secured FLASH memory. After having the PICs commercially decapped, he analyzed the silicon under an electron microscope revealing the location of security bits relative to […]
Degate reverse engineering tool
Degate is a graphical reverse engineering tool for Ubuntu and OS X. Degates’ purpose is to aid reverse engineering of digital electronics in integrated circuits (ICs). Degate helps you to explore images from ICs. It matches logic gates on the imagery given by graphical templates and it assists you in tracing circuit paths. Degate is […]
Reverse engineering the HRD remote serial protocol
Sivan Toledo likes to use Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD), a free program that serves as a user interface to radio transceivers. Modern transceivers can be controlled either from their front panel controls (if they have a front panel), or from a computer through a serial or USB connection. He writes: One cool and useful feature […]
Get basic hardware info using FCC ID number
When reverse engineering RF related hardware, you may notice an FCC ID number on a placard near the device’s model and serial numbers. The first three letters of the ID represents the “Grantee Code”, and the remaining letters and numbers are the “Product Code”. By entering these two values in the FCC ID Search Form […]
Intro to reverse engineering software
In his article, Discrete Cosine presents some basic information on reverse engineering hex files. A quick primer highlighting simple concepts about file analysis. If you’ve hacked hardware and wondered where to start with software, check this out.
27C3: Reverse engineering the MOS 6502
The MOS 6502 CPU, which was designed in 1975 and powered systems like the Apple II, the Atari 2600, the Nintendo NES and the Commodore 64 for two decades, has always been subject to intense reverse engineering of its inner workings. This talk by Michael Steil presents the way from a chip package to a […]
Reverse engineering an LCD
rossum guides us through reverse engineering several LCD displays. Via Hack a Day.
Reverse engineer an LED light bulb
Hack a Day is trying to reverse engineer a LED light bulb.
HVR-1600 Performance and Reverse Engineering
Check out this epic battle between man and I2C EEPROM. Devin wanted to fix a bug in the Linux driver for his HVR-1600 TV tuner card. He suspected that the Linux driver didn’t configure the board correctly, so he sniffed the I2C-based configuration traffic under Windows with a Saleae Logic. There’s a great overview of […]