In 2012 DefCon Security Conference in Las Vegas, Ang Cui, an embedded device security researcher, previewed a tool for firmware analysis, the foundational software that underlies any computer and the coordination between hardware and software. This tool is specifically designed to unravel IoT device firmware and compiled “binaries” that run on anything from home printers to door controllers. industry. Dubbed FRAK, the Firmware Reverse Analysis Console aims to reduce costs so that security researchers can make progress in evaluating a large and growing number of vulnerable embedded devices. and vulnerable instead of getting bogged down in tedious reverse engineering prep work. Cui promises that the tool will soon become open source and available for everyone to use.
“This is really useful if you want to understand how a mysterious embedded device works, whether there is a vulnerability inside, and how you can protect these embedded devices from being exploited,” Cui said. explained in 2012. “FRAK is going to be open source soon, so we’re working hard to get that out there. I want to do it one more time, review the internal code before you see my dirty laundry.”
He is nothing if not thorough. A decade later, Cui and his company, Red Balloon Security, launched Ofrak, or OpenFRAK, at DefCon in Las Vegas this week.
“In 2012, I think, this is a framework that will help researchers develop embedded security moving forward. And I went on stage and said, I think the community should have it. And I got some emails from some lawyers,” Cui told WIRED ahead of the release date. “Embedded security is an area where we need to have more eyes and better minds. We needed it 10 years ago, and we finally found a way to leverage it. Therefore Here is it. “
While it has yet to fulfill its mission as a publicly available tool, FRAK has also not grown tired throughout the years. Red Balloon Security continues to refine and expand the platform for internal use in its business with both IoT device manufacturers and customers who need a high level of security from the embedded devices they purchase and implementation. Jacob Strieb, a software engineer at Red Balloon, said the company has always used FRAK in its workflow, but Ofrak is an overhauled and streamlined version that Red Balloon itself has switched to using. use.
Cui’s 2012 FRAK demo raised some issues as the concept included firmware unpackers tailored for specific vendors’ products. Today, Ofrak is simply a generic tool that doesn’t dig into potential trade secrets or intellectual property concerns. Like other reverse engineering platforms, including NSA’s Open Source Ghidra tool, the IDA solid debugger, or the Binwalk firmware analysis tool, Ofrak is a neutral investigative framework. And Red Balloon’s new product is designed to integrate with these other platforms to make it easier for more people to collaborate.
“What makes it unique is that it is designed to provide a common interface for other tools, so the benefit is that you can use all the different tools depending on what you want. have at their disposal or what works best for a given project,” says Strieb.
