Chapter 1: Setting Up Your Pentesting Lab and Ensuring Lab Safety

Embedded systems, in the broadest definition of the term, are all around us in our everyday lives (examples being our phones, our routers, our watches, our microwaves, and more). They all have a small computer inside them and take care of very critical aspects of our lives, and also collect and protect data that is very critical to us. Sadly, the embedded system industry is lagging behind the usual computing industry in terms of security. In the last 10 years, we have seen examples of how this lack of security in these kinds of systems can lead to very tangible impacts on the real world (for example, the Mirai botnet; the Stuxnet virus; a wave of attacks against routers; some countries stealing other countries' drones by spoofing the Global Positioning System (GPS); and so on). This is why it is very important to train more and more people on how to find problems in these kinds of systems, not only because the problems are already here but also because there will be more and more such systems, and their ever-growing number will manage more and more crucial aspects of our lives (think about autonomous vehicles; drone delivery; robots to assist the elderly; and so on).

Helping you start with assessing the security of these kinds of systems is the first goal of this book. The second goal of this book is that you have fun while you learn because testing these kinds of systems is going to be interesting, and I take great pleasure in making the learning process enjoyable for you. You may ask yourself: How is it going to be fun for me? For me, it is because you are messing with the most trusted part of the system: the hardware. Not only you are messing with the most fundamental elements of the system, but you also are in direct contact with it; you will be soldering, drilling, scrapping, and touching the system to pop a shell! You will not only code to compromise your target system, but (hopefully rarely) the blood, sweat, and tears will not be figurative!

In this chapter, you will learn how to set up your lab, from a simple, low investment suitable for learning at home up to a professional testing environment. This chapter will get you up to speed on how to invest your money efficiently to achieve results and, most importantly, how not to kill yourself on the job.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• The basic things you will need to get started
• The different types of (common) tools available for your labs, what to get, and at which point
• The approach to acquiring test equipment, and the difference between a company and a home lab
• Basic items you will want in a lab, what they are, what are their uses, and the approach to setting up a lab
• Examples of ramping up your lab: basic, medium, and professional labs