Welcome to your introduction to the world of Hardware Hacking! With an included custom kit, 4 hours of video, step-by-step instructions, hands-on labs, instructor walk-throughs and quizzes, this course is designed to give you the foundational skills needed to analyze, interact with, and exploit embedded systems at the hardware level. Whether you’re a penetration tester looking to expand into IoT security, a developer wanting to understand how attackers target your devices, or simply curious about what’s happening beneath the surface of the electronics around you, this course will provide you with practical, hands-on experience.
The skills you’ll learn here are directly applicable to real-world security assessments. The same techniques used in this course have been used to find vulnerabilities in everything from consumer routers and smart home devices to industrial control systems and automotive electronics.
Price = $280 $350 (20% Launch Discount)
Expires Midnight ET March 31
What will I learn in Hardware Hacking 101?
With 4 hours of videos, written materials and a custom hardware hacking kit to complete hands-on labs, you’ll learn the following course contents:
0️⃣ Introduction
1️⃣ Basics of Hardware Hacking
2️⃣ Digital Signals
3️⃣ Embedded Startup
4️⃣ Hardware Debug Interfaces
5️⃣ Data Extraction from Memory
6️⃣ Firmware Analysis
7️⃣ Wrap Up
See for Yourself!
Included Custom Kit!
Hardware Hacking 101 is built around hands-on labs. To complete them with as few stumbling blocks as possible, you’ll need the hardware kit made exclusively for this course. The kit includes:
- Custom T113-S3 Target Board – The purple board on the right in the above image is your primary target device throughout the course. Built around the Allwinner T113-S3 system-on-chip, this board runs a custom Linux-based firmware with intentionally vulnerable configurations for you to discover and exploit. The board includes exposed debug headers and SPI flash that you’ll interact with during the labs. This isn’t a simulated environment — It’s real hardware running real firmware, giving you experience that directly translates to assessing production devices.
- Custom FT2232H Interface Board – The FT2232H is your multi-tool for this course. This USB adapter can speak UART, SPI, JTAG, and other protocols, making it the bridge between your computer and the target device. Our custom board breaks out the relevant pins in a convenient layout for the labs you’ll be performing. You’ll use this same style of adapter throughout your hardware hacking career! The FT2232H (and its variants) is one of the most common tools in any hardware hacker’s toolkit.
- Jumper Wires – You’ll use these to make connections between your FT2232H and the target board.
- Custom Linux VM – Comes with pre-installed tools to get hacking right out of the box!
The kit is yours to keep. The Interface Board and tools included in the Linux VM can be used for you to hack any IoT device that might be laying around your home, so you can continue honing your craft long after the course is done!
Who should take this course?
Hardware hacking sits at the intersection of electrical engineering, reverse engineering, and security research. Unlike traditional software security where you might be working with source code or network traffic, hardware security requires you to physically interact with devices—probing test points, reading flash memory, and communicating with debug interfaces that were never meant to be accessed by end users.
Catch your attention? Then this course is for you!
What is the format of this course?
Because of the requirement to connect your custom kit via USB, providing a cloud-based VM unfortunately won’t work. So, we’ve created a Custom Linux VM for you to complete this course with pre-installed tools.
Chapters 0 – 3 give the boring but necessary foundational knowledge needed to set the stage. Chapters 4 – 6 is where the fun happens, and you get hands-on exercises with your custom kit. For the hands-on portions of the course, we use the following method to help solidify the skills being taught:
- Lesson – You are presented the information you need to complete each exercise in 2 formats: Video then written material. The text is not word-for-word what is shown in the video, so we highly recommend that you do both!
- Lab – Plug in wires, use tools in the Linux VM, interact with the hardware… you physically get to play! We purposely have you try first.
- Instructor Walkthrough – This is where you get to see Trevor do the exact same exercise to see how he did.
- Quiz – To make sure the information gets to your long-term memory, you’re tested with multiple choice questions after each chapter.
Prerequisites for Hardware Hacking 101
No experience required! Well, at least no hardware hacking experience. We’ll teach you evefrything you need to know to get a shell on a device, dump firmware and more. However, this course does require a bit from you in advance:
- It is recommended to have some technical experience and be comfortable with setting up a virtual environment. We do provide instructions!
- It’s not required but helpful to be comfortable with the Linux command line.
- Desktop or laptop with at least 16GB of Ram, VMware Workstation Pro (free) and a USB-C data cable to connect the kit.
This course gives students the option to play on their own or utilize a dedicated virtual machine. Because everything is provided for you, you need nothing other than a computer, Internet access and a hacker mindset!
