Hardware#
Hardware is the operator’s bench discipline. Cyber tradecraft runs on physical hardware, and an operator who can trace a schematic, pull firmware off a chip, sniff a UART, or solder a dropbox extends their reach past what software alone can offer. The section covers the parts of the trade an operator needs at the bench and on target, from the lab fundamentals to the hardware-hacking techniques used against defended devices.
For the software side of embedded work (firmware, RTOS, drivers), see Software. For radio tradecraft at the signal-intelligence layer, see SIGINT. This section is the hardware itself.
Bench#
What the operator sets up before touching a board.
Electricity, parts, semiconductors, photonics, and the schematic symbols that draw them.
EDA, simulation, programming, hardware reverse engineering, and the bench instruments between schematic and shipped board.
Chips#
The integrated circuits that go on the board.
Logic gates, gate families, combinational and sequential logic.
Op-amps, comparators, timers, function generators, voltage regulators.
Programmable chips. Platforms, toolchains, peripherals, and the buses they talk on.
Single-board computers. Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, Jetson, Rock Pi, Odroid, LattePanda; the operator’s pocket-sized Linux pivot point.
Programmable logic controllers. Deterministic scan-cycle machines on the plant floor; the operator’s foothold into ICS and OT.
Boards#
Wires, circuits, the PCB that carries them, and the firmware that runs on the result.
The wires between chips. UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, USB, JTAG, SWD, and the rest of the embedded-bus catalog.
Common circuits the operator wires up with MCUs, digital ICs, and sensors.
PCB design discipline. Stack-up, placement, routing, design rules, and the manufacturing handoff.
The software that runs on the chip. Toolchains, vendor SDKs, RTOSes, programmers, debugging, and firmware analysis.
Projects#
Reference builds that integrate the rest of the section.
Reference airframe the operator builds to infiltrate and exfiltrate payloads, carry sensors, and join a mesh.
Mobile ad-hoc mesh nodes for field communication, coordination, spatial awareness, and SDR.