2024-08-07 –, Florentine A
The Serberus is a multi-port hardware hacking tool designed to easily connect to your target. It has 4 channels along with headers to interface with simultaneous UARTs, JTAG, SPI, I2C and SWD. I will introduce the Serberus and why I felt it was necessary to create it and what makes it unique and different than the other similar tools. It has a level shifter to allow you to connect to standard voltages of 1.8, 2.5 and 3.3v as well as any arbitrary voltage between 1.65V and 5.5V. The project is free and open source with all board layouts, design files and schematics published. No additional drivers or software configuration is needed for most use cases.
There are many tools out there that use the FT based USB to serial converters for this type of testing. The closest examples are the TIMEP and TIGARD, both of which use a similar level shifter design. What makes the Serberus unique is the following:
This is the first unit with multiple UART ports, allowing for MitM testing using tools such as the Akheron proxy (https://github.com/rapid7/akheron-proxy).
This unit uses a not very well documented feature in the FT 423x processors that allow for 8 serial channel TX and RX indicators to be driven from the serial EEPROM signal lines. This allows the tester to see what each channel is doing when verifying connectivity.
J-Link compatible JTAG connector, the same pinout that is used by the J-link, this allows the Serberus to use the many J-link interface boards to allow for easy connection to needle adapters, cortex programming headers that use the fine pitched headers and other adapters that use this pinout. This allows a tester to easily interface with a larger number of devices that use this pinouts on their production systems.
2.54 mm Logic header, this header allows for easy connection to a logic analyzer using dupont wires or an MSO oscilloscope’s logic probes.
Principal Consultant at Mandiant/Google Cloud has over 20 years of information security experience working with both private sector employers and the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Patrick is a skilled embedded security consultant and has released research in Avionics, embedded systems and even bricked his own Tesla while trying to make it faster.