04 - BruCON 0x0D - eCos Offensive Security Research Logbook - Quentin Kaiser
Channel: BruCON Security Conference
Date: 2021-10-07

Since the inception of the eCos RTOS in 1998, almost no dedicated research into its inner workings from an offensive security perspective got published. The only notable exception being the Cable Haunt research by Lyrebird which started to cover binary exploitation, but only scratched the surface. From cable modems to ICS components, millions of devices are currently running on eCos, but it seems that no one ever looked into them.

To fill this void, we launched ecos.wtf in March 2021. The project aims at documenting everything related to eCos platform security research in a single place. We published posts detailing Broadcom's eCos internals (interrupts and exception handling, memory layout, heap management), eCos firmware analysis, exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilites, and building eCos firmware implants. These posts were the product of dedicated security research into eCos based cable modems deployed by belgian ISPs such as VOO and Orange Belgium.

During this presentation, we will demonstrate how to pull eCos firmwares, analyze them, write exploits, and gain long-term persistence on devices. By doing so, we hope to provide the required methodology, tools, and techniques to security professionals who wants to get involved in the wonderful world of eCos security.