IoT Device Penetration Testing

We open the enclosure, identify the main SoC, flash and radio chips, and hunt for debug interfaces. An open UART console or a live JTAG port is often the fastest way in, so we probe for them with a logic analyzer and a Bus Pirate before we touch anything else. We document what is exposed to someone who has the device in their hands, because for many products that is exactly the threat.

We pull the firmware, from a debug port, an OTA download or directly off the flash chip, then unpack it with tools like binwalk and analyze the binaries in Ghidra. This is where connected products routinely fall over: hardcoded credentials, private keys shipped in every unit, debug backdoors left enabled, and outdated libraries with known CVEs. A single hardcoded key can compromise an entire fleet, so we treat firmware review as central rather than optional.

Next we look at how the device talks. We capture and analyze its wireless traffic, test the pairing and provisioning flow for weaknesses, and check whether commands can be sniffed, replayed or spoofed. On the network side we map every listening service, test the MQTT or CoAP broker, and assess the cloud APIs the device and its app depend on, including whether one customer’s device can be reached or controlled from another’s account.

We chain what we find into realistic attacks: from a captured key to remote control, from a companion-app secret to the cloud fleet, from a downgrade attack to persistent compromise. Every finding is written up with its impact, a severity rating, reproduction steps and a fix, split into an executive summary and a technical report. After you remediate, we retest for free.

Credentials, API keys and private keys baked into firmware are the single most common serious finding. When the same key protects every unit, breaking one device breaks the fleet. We show you exactly where each secret lives and what it grants access to.

UART consoles that drop to a root shell, open JTAG that lets an attacker read and rewrite flash, bootloaders with no password. These give a local attacker total control and are trivial to find once the case is open. We test how hard it is to disable them properly without breaking your own production and support workflows.

If updates are unsigned, delivered over plain HTTP, or can be rolled back to a vulnerable version, an attacker can push their own firmware or reintroduce old bugs. We test the whole update chain, from how the device fetches an image to how it verifies one, and whether a downgrade is possible.

Pairing flows that trust the first device to answer, radio commands sent in the clear, and cloud APIs that identify a device by a guessable ID all lead to the same place: someone controlling hardware they do not own. We test the join process and the account-to-device binding that is supposed to prevent it.

The European baseline for consumer IoT security, covering no universal default passwords, a vulnerability disclosure policy, secure updates and protected credential storage. We test against its provisions and note where a product meets or misses each one.

The Cyber Resilience Act and the Radio Equipment Directive’s cybersecurity requirements are reshaping what a connected product must prove before it ships to the EU market. Our testing evidence and report support that documentation, which matters if you sell hardware into Europe.

For a technical baseline we map findings to the OWASP IoT Top 10 and, where firmware depth warrants, the IoT Security Verification Standard, so your engineers get a recognised structure to work from.

These are bought in volume and physically accessible to anyone, including the attacker, so local hardware attacks and fleet-wide shared secrets matter most. A key extracted from one cheap unit off a shelf should never expose every other customer, and that is precisely the property we test.

Gateways, sensors and controllers in industrial or building settings often sit on flat networks and speak protocols with little authentication. Here the network and cloud paths and the update mechanism carry the weight, because a compromised device becomes a pivot into the wider environment rather than an end in itself.

When a device affects health or physical safety, availability and integrity outrank everything, and regulators expect evidence. We prioritise findings that could alter device behaviour or interrupt service, and we structure the report so it slots into the assurance file your notified body or auditor expects to see.