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Prototyping Boards Make It Easier To Find Flaws in Specialized Hardware
wiredmikey writes "Author Robert Vamosi writes an interesting piece on how security researchers are using open source 'prototyping boards' and other open source tools now available via the Internet for rapid prototyping of tools used in hardware analysis. 'The days of saying it would take the resources of a nation-state to discover or exploit vulnerabilities in a particular piece of hardware in an industrial control system or a healthcare environment are rapidly fading,' he writes. Vendors who do not test their products before selling them into the field are doomed to be targets of future research and, perhaps, attacks."
of Arduino and the "open hardware" movement. What is the big deal? Yeah, schematics and documentation are free but the circuits they are using are closed.
Well it wouldn't do much of anything if the circuit wasn't closed.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Ever heard of a capacitor?
The article is just another extremely tired "This existed since the 80s, but now that the Arduino supports it, we can act as if it a new invention." And ABSOLUTELY nothing other than the Arduino. "other open source tools"? Not that I saw in the article.
Which is a pity, because I think a DP bus pirate would be way the heck more useful for this kind of work. I used a DP BP to debug the software for a I2C real time clock, but I'm sure it could be used for reverse engineering or nefarious purposes (much like a screwdriver is multi-purpose)
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate
The days of saying it would take the resources of a nation-state to discover or exploit vulnerabilities in a particular piece of hardware in an industrial control system or a healthcare environment are rapidly fading
Was anyone technical ever dumb enough to ever believe that? Anyone? Ever? Marketing P.R. BS doesn't count.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I've been programming microcontrollers professionally for 30 years, and around 30 years ago I started making/using microcontrollers at home for hobby projects.
At that time I was using 68HC11 micros:
a) The 68HC11 is roughly equivalent to the arduino chip of today (ie - Atmega 168)
b) You could buy a 68HC11 dev board for $50, roughly equivalent to the Arduino
c) The programmer was $100
This is not a whole lot different from the Arduino of today, yet 68HC11 hobbyist development was rare.
The difference is in the software. At that time, you could get any number of chips made by several manufacturers. They almost gave away their development boards, because they wanted people to have familiarity with the units. They wanted people to recommend the micros to their employers, which might lead to a big sale.
The difference is in the software. You could get hardware for around $100, but the cheapest compiler you could get was $350 at the low end, topping out at $10,000. The assembler was free. You had to type assembly language into a text editor, use command-line tools to compile and download it, then debug it instruction-by-instruction.
The reason Arduino took off was not all because of the low price, it was because of the ease of use. Atmel gave out the IDE for free, and it was almost literally plug-and-play. You could get a "blink the LED" program up and running in under an hour, including installation of software. WinAVR (based on GCC) is a perfectly acceptable C compiler, also for free.
Atmel gave out the IDE for free, then someone noticed and came out with the Arduino. Bam! Instant market penetration.
That's why the Arduino became so popular: it's because Atmel took the trouble to make using/tinkering with the unit so easy. There was almost no learning curve associated with using the system - you could concentrate almost immediately on getting your work done.