Ham Hacks: Breaking Into the World of Software-Defined Radio

This DerpCon 2020 presentation explores how to find, capture, and reverse-engineer RF signals.

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Presentation by Kelly Albrink at DerpCon 2020


If you’re a hacker who has always been too afraid of RF protocols to try getting into SDRs, or you have a HackRF collecting dust in your closet, this talk shows you the ropes.

This content is for penetration testers and security researchers to introduce you to finding, capturing, and reverse-engineering RF signals.

Presentation includes:

  1. Radio basics
  2. Required hardware & software
  3. Demo find, capture, and analyze a car key fob signal
Kelly albrink

About the author, Kelly Albrink

Application Security Practice Director

Kelly Albrink is the Application Security Practice Director at Bishop Fox where she focuses on leading a diverse practice that includes traditional application security, mobile applications, and product security (including embedded, industrial, and IoT devices).

As the Application Security Practice Director at Bishop Fox, she has helped facilitate the expansion of the practice to focus on security during the design phase. This includes the development of offerings such as architecture security assessments, source code review, and threat modeling. She has also created a consulting mentorship program and led the revamp of an internal knowledge-sharing series of technical talks.

As a consultant, Kelly frequently performed hardware and wireless testing, becoming a subject matter expert in this area. She is responsible for identifying a high-risk CVE that impacted an Eaton power management appliance.

Kelly is an active member of the security community. At the first ever DerpCon, she presented on Software Defined Radio (SDR), a topic she later wrote about for the Bishop Fox blog in "Ham Hacks: Breaking into Software-Defined Radio."

More by Kelly

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