8-Bit Redux: Microcontroller Hacking

Architecture and Background

Phil King - 8-Bit Redux: Microcontroller Hacking In days gone by, microprocessors dealt in units of 8-bits at a time, and names such as Commodore, Atari, and Apple (as in "Apple ][") ruled the land. Intrepid hackers of amazing skill and talent worked their magic with limited resources, producing code that was a thing of beauty.

Vulnerability Analysis

The days of the widespread 8-bit desktop computer are past, but the 8-bit processor itself is not gone. It has gotten faster, added some peripherals and picked up some of the architectural features of it's larger later siblings, largely lost it's external memory, and gone into hiding as the ubiquitous microcontroller at the heart of embedded systems too numerous to count.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

Microcontrollers offer an excellent opportunity to recapture that spirit of the late 70's when 1K of code was a lot, while working with modern day technology. In this one hour talk, Phil King will describe how to set up a microcontroller development environment on a hacker budget and use it to learn and develop nifty 8-bit embedded system toys.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

The talk will be framed by descriptions of building an embedded keyboard sniffer with an Atmel AVR family microcontroller. Phil King is a hardware design engineer with 8 years of experience in various Silicon Valley hardware and software jobs. He received his BSEE from Stanford University in 1992, and an MSEE with an emphasis in computer networking (also from Stanford) in 1998. He is currently preparing to teach EE-281, the Embedded System Design class, at Stanford University this fall.