001 - Success!

Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast · 15 Aug 2017 · 42m · Episode 1

What this episode covers

Jen Castillo and Alvaro Prieto launch the 'Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast' to discuss hardware and firmware reverse engineering, a niche they feel is underserved compared to software-focused shows. They define reverse engineering through hobbyist projects, professional competitive analysis, and security research, citing examples like Jillian Ellsworth's Commodore 64 chip reverse engineering and Dmitry Grinberg's Dreamcast VMU hack. The hosts share personal anecdotes, including Alvaro's early PHP form processor security faux pas and Jen's experience debugging DTMF tone generators and VoIP voice degradation in call center equipment.

Mentioned

Companies
Cisco
Products
Dreamcast, VMU, Commodore 64
Tools
Ethereal, Wireshark, IDA
Also
Scanlime, DEFCON, Blackhat, REcon, Dmitry Grinberg, Jillian Ellsworth, Ken Shirriff, John McMaster, RadioShack, Fry's, HSC Surplus, JameCo, Evil Mad Scientist Labs

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • The Amp Hour · 1h 08m

    An interview with Alvaro and Jen from the URE Podcast

    Alvaro Prieto and Jen, hosts of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast, discuss their backgrounds in firmware engineering at companies like Apple, Amazon, and Planet. They contrast the high-volume, rapid-cycle nature of consumer electronics with the flexible timelines of industrial hardware, highlighting challenges like silicon errata, OTA update strategies, and the difficulty of finding competent firmware engineers. The conversation covers reverse engineering techniques, including protocol analysis and firmware dumping, inspired by creators like Micah Elizabeth Scott and Dimitri Greenberg.

  • Embedded.fm · 1h 11m

    399: Hey, What's Going On?

    Jen Costillo, a firmware engineer and co-host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast, discusses her transition into voiceover artistry and her work with Cat Machines Dance. She details the technical nuances of recording for educational toys, such as handling concatenated speech and memory constraints, and explains how voiceover skills enhance her engineering communication. The conversation also covers the business of voiceover, including platforms like Voice123 and Sweetwater, and the importance of reverse engineering for understanding product security.

  • Embedded.fm · 1h 02m

    130: Criminal Training Camp (Repeat)

    Alvaro Prieto, an embedded firmware engineer at Planet Labs, discusses his transition from Apple to the startup, highlighting the cultural shift from siloed secrecy to radical transparency. He details several personal hardware projects, including reverse-engineering the Parallax Proto-X quadcopter's radio protocol and building autonomous laser-shooting robots for DEFCON. Prieto also shares insights on his open-source tool, Silta, which bridges USB to I2C/SPI for sensor testing, and reflects on the importance of community encouragement in maker culture.

  • Embedded.fm · 50m

    111: Potty Train Your Tamagotchi (Repeat)

    Natalie Silvanovich, a security engineer at Google Project Zero, discusses her reverse engineering of Tamagotchi devices, detailing how she dumped code from General Plus 6502-based hardware and created a development kit. She explains the technical challenges of working with mask ROM, undocumented processors, and the specific vulnerabilities in Tamagotchi 'figures' that allowed for code execution. Silvanovich also touches on her broader career in hardware and software security, including her work on Flash exploits and the 'Hardware Excuse Generator' tool.

  • Embedded.fm · 1h 38m

    200: Oops

    Hosts Alicia and Christopher White celebrate the 200th episode of Embedded.fm with a panel of former guests: Alvaro Prieto, Andrei Chichak, Elizabeth Brenner, Chris Svec, and Chris Gammell. The group discusses their favorite embedded tools, including Saleae logic analyzers, Digilent Analog Discovery, Beyond Compare, and HP16C calculators, while sharing humorous field stories and interview anecdotes. They reflect on the joys of working in embedded systems, such as seeing products on retail shelves and the satisfaction of debugging complex hardware-software interactions.

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.