RF Hacking with SDR

Day 1 - RF preliminaries

Day 1 is an introduction to radio that will help students to learn its concepts and the techniques used today to receive and transmit signals, but also the constraints that we have to deal with in heterogeneous environments:

• Introduction to Radio
• History, evolution, and EU regulations
• Radio waves
• Digital Signal Processing
• Software-Defined Radio
• Antennas
• Amplifiers and connectors
• Software-Defined Radio devices
• Specifications
• How to choose them
• Few tips and hacks
• Observations
• Waterfall and spectrum analyzers
• Signal identification
• Modulation/Demodulation
• Encoding/Decoding
• Faraday cages and how to design a very cheap one
• Use of attenuators and software gain parameters

Day 2 - Hands-on radio

Day 2 will put the student in the playground of the Software-Defined Radio, where every idea can be written on software to be simulated and then concretized to realize receivers and transmitters depending on the chosen hardware limitations:

• Introduction du GNU Radio
• Software-Defined Radio processing in the chain
• Practice with GNU Radio Companion
• Block schemas
• Parameters
• Generators
• Sinks and sources
• Operators
• Simulations
• Modules
• Executing a block in a real SDR device
• Listening to simple AM and FM signals
• Transferring a simple signal
• Optimizing samples processing
• Features to process samples
• Creating your own block
• Investigation and handy tools
• Alternatives to GNU Radio (RedhawkSDR, etc.)





Day 3 - Attacking physical intrusion systems

Day 3 resumes and applies previous chapters to study physical intrusion systems and brings useful tricks for Red Team tests as well as pentests:

• Common sub-GHz Remotes
• Introduction
• Capturing data
• Replaying saved samples
• Analyzing samples (manually and with powerful tools)
• Rolling codes security
• Devices using the mobile network (2G/3G/4G)
• Introduction
• Monitoring
• Mobile security
• Existing tools
• Interception techniques
• Our feedback in missions
• Tooling with GNU Radio
• Fuzzing and triggering bugs with 2G, 3G and 4G protocol stacks over-the-air
• RFID
• Analyzing radio communications
• Identifying technologies
• Tools and techniques to defeat common physical access systems and methods to study custom systems
• Some feedback on connected locks
• Red Team tips





Day 4 - Unexpected implants, industrial systems, and arsenals

Last day will focus on unexpected implants vendors introduced in some technologies, custom and industrial systems, and the development of handy radio prototypes to use during a mission:

• Attacking Custom devices
• Introduction
• Identification (looking at devices' references, components, etc.)
• Sniffing signals
• Decoding signals
• nRF devices
• Introduction
• Analyzing nRF bases devices GNU Radio like mousses, keyboards, and presenters
• Capturing strokes
• Hijacking vulnerable devices
• LoRa
• Introduction
• Detect used bands
• Capture signal
• Optimize the interception process
• Decode data and payloads
• Security of LoRa
• Transmit packets
• Power-Line Communication systems
• Introduction: data superposed on your electric line
• Monitor PLC devices
• Exploit old and new vulnerabilities on the HomePlug standards
• Talk to cars and charging stations
• Take advantage of your electric lines that behave like an antenna
• Hardware Hacking
• Introduction and how it could be complementary
• Survival and practical reflexes
• Cheap tools and tricks
• Radio prototyping arsenal for red team tests

The content of private trainings can be arranged depending on your needs. As PentHertz is specialized the RF fields, we also provide additional content as follows:

• GPS: decoy attacks, limits, and defenses
• Bluetooth: attacks, fuzzing, and defenses
• Wi-Fi: attacking the different protocols, fuzzing the protocol stack, and analyzing the radio signal
• RFID/NFC: additional content and advanced techniques with SDR
• Hardware: additional content in hardware and practice to attack embedded systems
• etc.

• Knowledge of Linux and a programming language such as C, C++, C#, Rust, or Python is necessary
• Understanding of pentesting (network and applications) or Red teaming
• All attendees will need to bring a laptop capable of running VMware virtual machine (8GB of RAM is a minimum)
• Basic knowledge of radio is not mandatory but is a plus