How We Accidentally Became Hardware Hackers

This light-hearted talk follows two former electrical engineers who moved from HVAC embedded work into hardware security. They open with the everyday errors that pushed them toward hacking: wrong component footprints, crossed schematic wires, parts placed on the wrong side of a board, and accidental shorts from vias. Fixing those boards by hand, cutting and bridging traces under a microscope, and debugging in freezing test chambers taught them skills that map directly onto hardware attacks.

The middle of the talk covers those skills and the tools behind them. Logic analyzers, portable oscilloscopes and universal programmers were central to their work, and dumping firmware through JTAG or external flash often exposed hardcoded credentials. The speakers also described fault injection against microcontroller bootloader protections, correlation power analysis against AES implementations, and physical intrusion testing at a former workplace. In the Q&A they gave examples of exposed UART root access and firmware updates that could be triggered by SMS, and argued that a device's API keys can expose the backend services it talks to.

They closed by urging engineers and hobbyists to keep a growth mindset, celebrate small wins and treat failed boards as learning. Public datasheets, FCC filings and low-cost kits were suggested as starting points for newcomers who feel intimidated by hardware.