HelSec Workshop: Introduction to Ghidra & Firmware Reverse Engineering

**ATTENTION SIGNED IN PARTICIPANTS!!
YOU NEED TO PROVIDE YOUR FULL NAME TO CONTACT@HELSEC.FI BY EMAIL.
DUE TO LIMITED AMOUNT OF SLOTS AND HIGH DEMAND, THOSE SIGNED IN TO THE EVENT AND HAVEN'T PROVIDED THEIR FULL NAME & DO NOT SHOW UP WILL BE BANNED FROM HELSEC EVENTS FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE YEAR. **

Introduction to Ghidra and Firmware Reverse Engineering.

This is an entry level workshop that serves as an introduction to ghidra in the context of hardware firmware reverse engineering. We will be using a multi timezone clock as the case study. The clock uses a MC-48 series microcontroller from the seventies that is quite simple and easier to understand than modern processors.

Reading the first 40 pages of https://devsaurus.github.io/mcs-48/mcs-48.pdf or the start of the MCS-48 users manual should give enough starting information to understand the system. The MCS-48 Users manual in particular has a really good section about how a (simple) processor works.

Please install ghidra (https://ghidra-sre.org/) beforehand and make sure it runs on your system.

For OSX users it is recommended to use 'brew' for installing and also install 'gradle' and then in console go to homebrew_base/Caskroom/ghidra//ghidra-/Ghidra/' and execute 'gradle buildNatives' to get locally signed versions of the native extensions.

The outline of the workshop will be:

1. A short presentation on the hardware
2. Guided setup of the ghidra project
3. Guided tour of the main ghidra features
4. Reverse engineering the firmware in small groups

• Few hints will be provided as the workshop progresses

5. At the end we will go through the program and what it does

The event will be hosted at Elisa premises in Pasila.
Registration will close on Thursday 19.10 at 4 PM.
Participants will need to provide their full name for Elisa's visitor registration.

Trainer bio:
🔷 Vesa-Pekka Palmu is a software developer and a hobbyist hardware hacker. He has experience in reverse engineering and resurrecting or repurposing many obsolete devices or protocols.