Hardware Stuff for Software People

This talk will be an introduction to doing "hardware stuff" stuff, for people accustomed to plying their trade against software. I will discuss how to build tools (and use existing tools) to sniff/spy on a variety of hardware communications channels from UART Serial (the kind in your computer) to the very ubiquitous SPI/I2C serial busses used in virtual everything (from EEPROM in your portable DVD player to the HDMI/VGA cables between your computer and monitor). I will demonstrate how these simple hardware taps can be used to begin reverse engineering, spoofing, and fuzzing in places where (as a software person) you might not have previously felt comfortable. I will be bringing along a number of custom hardware and software tools (used specifically for these purposes) as well as a mock lab environment for demonstrations. Other than these practical skills, I am new to this "hardware stuff" so please don't expect a "embedded-JTag-SCADA-mobile" buzzword soliloquy. I'll just be sharing some stories and showing some neat hardware and software I've recently found useful.