Smart devices in your house are likely vulnerable and easy to hack. This talk will show you how to. Using a handful of cheap tools such as a UART to TTL adapter, an RTL-SDR dongle, and some open-source software, we'll walk you through the process of how I hacked two real targets from scratch. Don’t worry if you don’t know what UART or TTL means, we have you covered.
First, we will explore how a Smart Display was compromised, from gaining initial access to reverse engineering the device and identifying vulnerabilities along the way. Then, we will analyze how a commercial weather station's RF protocol was decoded and how custom data was injected into it.
Along the way, we'll cover the basics: initial reconnaissance of an electronic board, how to identify debug interfaces, and how to approach an unknown radio frequency signal. No prior hardware experience. No expensive lab. Just cheap hardware, open-source tools, and curiosity. Hopefully, you’ll walk away having a plan to start your journey in the hardware hacking world.
Presented at Ekoparty Miami 2026