Joe Grand: Can You Really Trust Hardware? Exploring Security Problems in Hardware Devices

Black Hat Briefings, Las Vegas 2005 [Audio] Presentations from the security conference

Most users treat a hardware solution as an inherently trusted black box. "If it's hardware, it must be secure," they say. This presentation explores a number of classic security problems with hardware products, including access to stored data, privilege escalation, spoofing, and man-in-the-middle attacks. We explore technologies commonly used in the network and computer security industries including access control, authentication tokens, and network appliances. You'll leave this presentation knowing the consequence of blindly trusting hardware. Joe Grand is the President of Grand Idea Studio, a San Diego-based product development and intellectual property licensing firm, where he specializes in embedded system design, computer security research, and inventing new concepts and technologies. Joe has testified before the United States Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and is a former member of the legendary hacker collective L0pht Heavy Industries. He is the author of "Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty" and a co-author of "Stealing The Network: How to Own A Continent". Joe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Boston University.