#04 - How To Get The Firmware - Hardware Hacking Tutorial

If you are struggling to get the firmware out of your device, this is the video for you!
In this video I will explain the possible ways we can use to to get the firmware of our IoT device.
I will do a practical example, of one of these possible ways. I will connect the PC to the UART of our sample device, I will analyze the boot log, I will access the command line interface of the boot loader, and I will dump the firmware, exploiting the dump command available in the boot loader. I will use a couple of scripts, do dump the entire EEPROM in an hexadecimal ASCII text file, and, then, to convert back this file in binary form to get the exact image of the EEPROM.
********* Links with additional Information
Channel's Author: www.makemehack...
Channel's Web Site: www.makemehack...
The sample router (Gemtek WVRTM-127ACN) on techinfodepot: en.techinfodepo...
The sample router (Gemtek WVRTM-127ACN) reverse engineered on GitHub, includes scripts to dump the EEPROM to a text file and to convert it back to binary file: github.com/dig...
TTL Serial Adapter (affiliate link): amzn.to/2vvzCYB
PuTTY, the terminal emulator: www.putty.org/
Wireshark, Ethernet analyzer: www.wireshark....
Curl, command line tool for transferring data with URLs: curl.haxx.se/
Wget, retrieving files with URLs: www.gnu.org/so...
Mitmproxy, a free and open source interactive HTTPS proxy: mitmproxy.org/
Bus Pirate: dangerousprotot...
OpenOcd, On Chip Debugger: openocd.org/
U-Boot, The Universal Boot Loader: www.denx.de/wi...
Buildroot, a simple, efficient and easy-to-use tool to generate embedded Linux systems through cross-compilation: buildroot.org/
Binwalk, a fast, easy to use tool for analyzing, reverse engineering, and extracting firmware images: github.com/ReF...
SOIC8 SOP8 Flash Chip IC Test Clips Socket Adpter BIOS/24/25/93/95 Programmer (affiliate link): amzn.to/39A9JFd

[@mihaifelseghi]

You sir are a human university, the best tutorials ever made, the most comprehensive and clear, keep up the good work, I am waiting for the next video in the series.

[@MakeMeHack]

Hello Mihai Felseghi, thank you very much for your appreciation and support.

[@Ravecat27]

@@MakeMeHack Thank you for your Video, I need help! :( I think all my Devices have a malicous code, Smart TV, Monitor, Smartphone, Computer, Tablet, Xbox one, PS4...... They are all like radio controlled, they will be very fast hot, the sound will be quieter and quieter and the picture quality is worse, dark picture, even die Mini DAB Radio in the Kitchen have this malicous code, do you know about this malicous code?

[@oscareriksson9414]

I am a programmer at a finance company, but was always interested in hardware, mostly from a software perspective. I started looking at this series about a year ago and it kick-started a burning interest in electronics and hardware hacking in general. Now my desk is overcrowded with bread boards, several chips and boards like raspberry pies, several arduinos of different types, standalone mc chips, avr and arm cortex and have started soldering stuff together with sensors etc etc. The wires are every where. Even spreding out to the living room! Now I have started looking into openocd and things to get to the bottom of the hardware communication things, saw this video series again and this time I understand wth you are explaining (in terms of technology) which makes me appreciate the video series even more. Grazie mille!

[@shoaibraza1900]

How are you now?

[@MattSimmonsSysAdmin]

I am totally loving this channel. Thank you for spending the time and effort sharing your knowledge. I have so many of your videos to watch!

[@taterfpv]

This showed up in my feed today. I have no need to do any of this but I watched the entire video. You explain everything so well I just kept watching. Good job man.

[@bysectrademark6729]

This is perfect channel for all beginers in reverse firmware education and understanding what firmware works...Great job! Maybe in future we can send you some firmwares and you can make video from firmware analys this firmware.

[@louieearle]

This was a fantastic video - you have clear depth of knowledge, and you present better than almost every other hardware reversing video. I particularly like the context you give. So often presenters just show a wall of cryptic commands and output. You do a fantastic job in explaining.

[@garypaulson5202]

Am really enjoying this video series, thank you! I also am an old man who learned Perl :)

[@celebris3]

Valerio, I really like the way you explain - detailed, clear and comprehensive, no shortcuts, no hiding details. Thank you for sharing your experience to us. I just discovered your channel, already subscribed and can't wait to watch from the beginning. Keep up the good work, I am sure this channel will grow up quick. (Y)

[@GastoNet]

Ciao Valerio! You have the most instresting channel I've subscribed in my whole life! Keep the good work and stay safe.

[@murrij]

like i said in my tweet earlier today, this whole series is awesome. you fill in the blanks on a lot of information that is all over on KZbin but not i none place. thank you.

[@MakeMeHack]

Hi murrij, thank you very much for your continued appreciation and support.

[@BobanZikic]

This is the best explained how to i have ever seen. Must go back to begging and to watch everything...

[@WereCatf]

Just in case someone stumbles upon here: uboot often has the commands to dump the contents of any connected SPI NOR or NAND flash disabled. Also, e.g. Xiaomi likes to disable UART-input entirely for uboot and the installed OS, so none of this will work in that case and you will need to either access the flash directly, use JTAG or find a vulnerability for the installed OS that lets you get root access that way.

[@ronwellman]

I was all smiles during this entire video. Your expertise shows through and this was the exact content I was looking for. I am excited to learn more. Thank you!

[@baghdadiabdellatif1581]

😂 me too. God bless him

[@TheMadMagician87]

Fantastic video's, the density of information is incredible to me! Absolutely loving this series, and particularly this video so far, there are so many things I always wondered about in boot logs that you have addressed, it's inspiring me to learn more about all the other bits in there as well!

[@markp5726]

Re: TSOP (at 7:31) - there are clips for chips like this available. They can be found by searching for something like "nand tsop clip" or "360 clip". Security researchers use them to find TOCTOU (etc) firmware security flaws.

[@M.E63]

You can get tsop 48 clips, people used them before for Xbox 360 and ps3 etc but it’s not hard to remove one to read it and solder it back on the board

[@EvilSapphireR]

​@@M.E63can you please provide any tutorial/video showing how it is done?

[@M.E63]

@@EvilSapphireR I’ll try to do that

[@EvilSapphireR]

@@M.E63 thanks man!

[@papamidnightfpv]

I have always wanted to get into hardware hacking. This video is great I hope you keep them coming.

[@MakeMeHack]

Hello Isaiah Newman, thank you for your appreciation and support. I plan to continue with this series and with this channel. My original ambition was to release a video each week, but in reality, I need more time, so, on average I will release a new video every 10/14 days.

[@HiHi-le3ev]

Плохо что я раньше не нашел вашь Ютуб канал . Мала кто расказывает и показывает так подробно как вы . Хорошего развития канала .

[@edgeeffect]

I am also an old man.... I haven't seen Expect or TCL for many years.... Expect was ("was", no..... "IS") wonderful for this sort of thing. In the past I ran "end of day" on our mainframe using something very much like expect and my manager thought it was "black magic". I want to go back and look at my old TCL scripts now.

[@lindsay5985]

Valerio, a genuinely informative video, packed with useful, advanced information that will inspire and spark the interest of tinkerers, young and old, everywhere. We all thank you for sharing so generously. For the feedback you asked for, I would encourage more use of text to display names and acronyms, because you naturally have an endearing strong accent and this could improve the clarity for a wider audience. I will definitely be learning from more of your videos. Subscribed.

[@markusschnepf]

Right after Super Mario, this is gonna be my 2nd favourite Italian

[@gtpsic]

Fantastic video production. So fascinating. You did a great job. This was easy to follow and packed with so much info. Just fascinating

[@anuradhapriyankara5226]

I have watched most of your videos and what can I say is your videos are fantastic and very informative. I am too an electronic engineer and I'm trying to reverse engineer a set top box these days. Your tutorials were very much helpful for me. I'm currently trying to extract the firmware using JTAG since I have successfully identified JTAG port using your tutorial. Keep up the good work! P.s- you have a nice accent too ;-) I like it

[@baghdadiabdellatif1581]

Good for you, i am too electronic engineer What JTAG did you use?

[@bosr]

I agree with the comments here. Thank you so much for sharing such amount of knowledge, in such a structured and brilliant way. We are lucky to have you. Gracie mille, from France.

[@daanklem264]

I teach this content and really appreciate your detail and precision! Pure gold!

[@ThatNiceDutchGuy]

Grazie mille per aver menzionato Expect! Era esattamente la lingua di cui avevo bisogno. Ti auguro il meglio!

[@longtran12345678]

your video is gold, it slowly teaches me so many valuable knowledge, thank you so much. I feel luck to see your video even for the first time.

[@callelewander6789]

Mr. Giampietro, thank you for sharing your knowledge! You have some serious skills! I will share your material with my colleagues!

[@mrsaizo0000]

Subscribed, things like this is not only good to know, but can help you "modify" certain hardware..

[@micmacha]

I already loved binwalk, and I had no idea it could tell you about the entropy too!

[@arkinzoodsma1510]

Hello sir I would really want to thank you for your awesome content! It's a real wealth of high quality hands on information coming from experience which you dont see often. Most of the time people make 1 short tutorial and thats itl. Also your english is very understandable and I would dare to say that its easier to follow than some native speakers. You really make an effort to speak clearly and it helps! Have you maybe thought about doing a patreon or something like that? I really hope that you will contineau producing videos!

[@BreakinUpBuds]

Man I wish you were still making videos you are awesome thanks for what you did make.

[@qbitsday3438]

Sono indiano e adoro il tuo tutorial.Grazie mille!Mi iscrivo immediatamente! google helped me!

[@baghdadiabdellatif1581]

this is the exact content I was looking for. Thank you. God bless you

[@adriancoanda9227]

The dump is easy to reverse engineering intro would be awesome 👌

[@GerardFuguet]

You are simply awesome, I hadn’t any idea how to do this and luckily I found you (seems most OpenWRT based routers uses same bootloader structure), I’m very happy to see how you manage your videos/explanations, it denotes you have passion for you work. This is great sir! :) Hope you are safe under these rare days, take care good man!

[@MakeMeHack]

Hello Gerard Fuguet, thank you for your appreciation and support. And yes I and my family are safe, at home 🙂

[@torftee2235]

This is just GREAT stuff, Valerio! Grazie mille from Germany!

[@M.E63]

I understand lots of people can’t solder a TSOP 48 but it’s not near impossible like you say, I’ve done lots of them for tv boards

[@stephanonyambo66]

IM IN LOVE WITH HARDARE ENGENEETIND AND REVERSE MODIFICATION with hacking enterferance

[@biganguria]

zio fai prima a parlare in italiano che capisco meglio hahah sei il migliore grazie per sti video

[@ramazanciftci1770]

Maestro mille grazie di Germania por cet seria di video informativo. It was very nice to see in practice things having thought about theoretically. As a thanks I will subscribe your channel for the first time after watching non stop 15 years KZbin videos.

[@krzsn5382]

Great job, you're the best explain this topics... thanks for sharing your knowledge...

[@cralx2k]

These series are gold... AMAZING

[@jacobwalters9660]

Great video. I am inspired to try and dump the firmware of my electric skateboard

[@MakeMeHack]

Hello Jacob, thank you for your appreciation!

[@murrij]

dude that would be cool.

[@mostafaarabi4793]

You are a young excellent man.thanks.

[@thealex7671]

Amazing! You are genius, my friend, i'm gonna watch every your video! ❤❤❤

[@marialetiziadigiampietro8423]

Very professional and inspiring video! Can't wait to see the next episode

[@MakeMeHack]

Hello Maria Letizia, thank you for your appreciation and support. Next episode should arrive next week!

[@stevecross9159]

Valerio From the UK great teaching thank you.

[@tamilelectronicsforbeggine1229]

thank you very much for your detailed video script series sir. very useful and im grateful to you

[@StefanSonesson]

Mille grazie! (did I get that right?) fantastic information that got me grabbing cables and stuff. Now for the rest of your videos 😎🙏

[@0xssff]

dude youre the best teacher ever

[@serggorod1423]

Отличный ролик! Время обновить инструменты!

[@darkstareng]

Holio molio this is such an amazing guide. Leave it to a real engineer to know exactly what they're doing!

[@jordan2869]

I have a hisense 50U6HF tv (Amazon version) I have soldered RX,TX, GND to debug area and get output in serial console but when i try to interrupt boot to get to uboot it says lockdown mode? I get a shell with no ability to input any commands. How to bypass this?

[@pablolopezcorona]

Muy interesante la forma de codificar la informacion el los ruters desde el firware.

[@mohelm97]

Thanks a lot, this is pure gold

[@googlefuuplayad9055]

20:41 😅😊😁👍👍 27:17 😊😁 31:50 wow. Thanks Thx 4 the vid

[@BristlyBright]

Thank you for this great video series! I really appreciate the knowledge you are sharing with others. Grazie mille!

[@MiguelGuatemala]

Excelentemente EXPLICADO,!! gracias

[@annag5458]

Fabulous video on first principles

[@TheRealKitWalker]

So very very useful. Thanks for sharing 👏👏👍👍✌️✌️

[@matheuso86]

Sir, please, continue this awesome work!!

[@johnSmith-mo5ne]

A lot of thank for this useful guide. You are great!

[@BehzadmozaffariTazehkand]

the best discusion that have ever seen

[@wawandharmawan2441]

Interesting video. Thanks for your explanation. Can you make Raspberry Pi Pico board as a tool to read/write firmware of CSR-BC417 Chip which is in cheap bluetooth module HC-05? I tried it but failed, and I don't know why.

[@meowme7644]

impressive! instantly subbed 😉 very nice thank you👍👍 have a nice Domenica

[@xEnergyShootx]

questo video è un tesoro, complimenti

[@TheRazgr1z1]

10/10 please dont stop CIAO !!!!

[@Xindak]

How to get firmware if i have only JTAG interface on board? On board i have small ic eeprom - this is all firmware of this board or in processor is another soft? I was looking channel like this about 1 year, i hope you turn back to making video!

[@saurabhambulkar1]

Great ,information in the video....keep it up make those wonderful videos..

[@ashfaquekhan7282]

"Great Teacher Valerio"

[@BlensonPaul]

great explanation, love you man. .

[@MarcioSantosMarcio-D-Santos]

Thank you and you gained another subscriber, I would like to change the firmware of an Epson printer, but I don't know if it's possible, just looking to find out

[@GianlucaRoccaGian]

Grandeee esattamente cosa voglio imparare ❤️❤️

[@elcondor7627]

This is just hacking ASMR :)

[@oscardowning9507]

This man is a true legend

[@rhodyrhckthaladro7840]

A very helpful video...

[@rupioe582]

Very nice video you might have started a passion for hardware hacking ❤

[@cybergen2K]

Definitely deserves more subs! Grazi!

[@vieiracastro82]

Thank you for share the World so much knowledge, is impressive you domain, congratulations!!!

[@martinneff1681]

Great Tutorial, pls keep it up. Your are a very good tutor.

[@indian3197]

Hello Sir. I got a cable modem device. It has a black cable where one end of it is connected to the motherboard and the other end of the cable has an audio jack connector facing outside. Do you know which type of cable should I use to connect to this audio jack and my laptop?.

[@030H]

This is amazing. Thank you so much, I'm subscribing to your channel 👍

[@Kingsize001100]

You are a genius. Keep making videos!

[@bajwakamran5791]

Very interesting and detailed information

[@wilwad]

You sir know what you are talking about thus I have subscribed

[@emmyweed5827]

A true artist

[@MedicalStudentChannel]

You are a perfect teacher !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@foxitize]

In what cases can the firmware be dumped only by opening the chip and visually reading the rom under a microscope?

[@Diablo-RED]

Salve è complimenti per il video su Github, ho letto la tua guida per sostituire il Firmware con uno Open Source ad un wvrtm-127acn ho un wvrtm-130acn volevo sapere sè la procedura è la stessa!? è sé il Dump dell Firmware è indispensabile ó si può saltare in quanto richiede circa 11 ore per il dump!? Grazie!

[@Nick_Wine]

Sei un grande.

[@drigogt]

May I ask you a question: where is stored the UUID in a board? In the EEPROM? Is this usually a hash?

[@ombudsman3821]

Bravo. Molto interessante

[@IdoSamuelson]

Thank you. What are the options when there is not much data in uart boot beside "ERROR" , will appriciate help

[@McKaktus259]

Thanks for the video. I am currently trying to gain access to a system through UART. However, when I connect my UART-USB bridge, I can only see the output of the device (so baud rate seems to be correct) but cannot send any commands. I have checked the wiring and settings. Both TX and RX are connected to the MCU (I checked the traces). Do you have any idea other idea?

[@bosr]

Thanks!

[@testinasdlkfj]

You can't sniff the router's WAN interface? What about creating a subnet using the target router connecting it's WAN interface to any LAN port on the primary router.

[@riskydissonance]

Loving the content, thank you!!!

[@brontobytesdm9003]

I am thinking that when you speak in such a rhythm as Italian that it makes your brain sync and work better. So I am wanting to at least teach my person to be in a rhythm - well as I have been dancing a lot and have body rhythm.

[@arthurbrazzle6854]

I had to pause and make this comment @27:13....."1 byte = 3 chars (2 hex digits + space)" -> um no :P But everything else is impressive :)

[@90daner]

bellissimo video mister!