IoT Security and IoT Forensics
Certified IoT Security and Forensics Engineer
The platform differentiator: secure embedded devices from Arduino and ESP32 through MQTT and BLE, then break them, analyse the firmware and do IoT forensics on real hardware.
Why IoT is a different problem
Almost every assumption that security depends on is false on an IoT device:
| Assumption | Reality on an IoT device |
|---|---|
| There is a user who can install a patch | Firmware update may never arrive |
| The device has a CPU and RAM to spare | An ESP32 has 520 KB of RAM |
| TLS is available | No entropy source, no certificate store, no time |
| Passwords can be required | Shared default credentials in firmware |
| Logs exist | Flash wear budget and no one reads them |
| The device can validate a certificate | It cannot do the maths cheaply |
| The device is not reachable from the internet | It usually is, on a home router with no segmentation |
This produces a class of compromise that is unlike anything else in this platform: persistent,cheap, hard to patch, and invisible, because nobody owns the device that got attacked.
What makes this course different
Two halves that are usually taught separately:
- Build and secure — firmware that authenticates, encrypts at rest, updates safely, and fails
closed when it cannot
- Break and analyse — extract firmware, find hardcoded secrets, debug JTAG, sniff BLE, and
perform IoT forensics on a device you have physical access to
What you will be able to do
- Program Arduino and ESP32 and understand what each hardware feature gives an attacker
- Design protocols on MQTT, HTTP and BLE with authentication, authorisation and confidentiality
- Extract and analyse firmware, find hardcoded credentials and debug interfaces, and patch a binary
- Practically assess a device: UART exposure, debug ports, default credentials, update verification
- Forensically image flash memory, recover deleted data, and establish what a device actually did
Syllabus
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1
IoT fundamentals and the hardware threat model
Architecture, constraints, and the physical attack surface nobody reviews.
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2
Arduino, ESP32 and embedded C
Programming constrained devices, and the C mistakes that matter far more at the edge.
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3
Sensors, protocols and communication security
MQTT, HTTP, BLE and industrial protocols, and how each one is abused.
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4
IoT security engineering: keys, updates and the fleet
Device identity, secure provisioning, OTA updates, and what to do when a device is already pwned.
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5
Firmware analysis and hardware hacking
Extracting firmware, reversing embedded binaries, and using the debug interfaces.
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6
IoT forensics
Imaging flash, recovering what a device did, and establishing a timeline.
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Final exam
Locked. Enrol in the course to unlock the final exam.