Notes, documents and more

When I was researching these topics the knowledge or conclusions were not easy to find or simply non-existing. Obviously, this might have changed between when I did the research and now so do take the dates into account.

• 2026

  3D printed kids clock (ESP32 LED symbols) "review"

  I wanted to have a nice "Kids clock" for my daughter so she could see when she can get out of bed without screaming through the house that she is awake. During some random searches on printables.com I found the perfect (paid) project from Remindi. However, after printing and setting everything up I do have some notes for what could be improved.

  hardware · 3d-printing · iot
• 2018

  Inspector Trace Set .trs file support in Python

  ↗
  During my time at Riscure, I worked on multiple problems that required me to generate or read Inspector trace sets. I created this Python library to do so which ended up far outliving me and is now hosted at Keysight.
  python · library
• 2018

  On the security (or lack thereof) of Anna the connected IoT thermostat

  I installed a smart thermostat at home and noticed a stack trace it shouldn't have shown me, so I kept pulling. What started as a UART shell became a flash dump, then a home-grown Lua "encryption" that was really obfuscation, and finally a public relay server holding 205 live reverse tunnels into strangers' home networks. Disclosed to Plugwise and fixed before publishing.
  cybersecurity · iot · reverse engineering · hardware
• 2017

  SingStar Mic application documentation

  ↗
  Documentation of the reverse engineered SingStar Mic application protocol
  reverse engineering · games
• 2016

  Comprehensive security analyses of a toys-to-life game and possible countermeasures

  pdf ↗
  My MSc thesis: I reversed the key derivation algorithm out of a toys-to-life reader's firmware, which made it possible to forge toys for under a dollar and turn up unreleased ones before they were announced, then designed the Ed25519 signature scheme that would have prevented it. If this sounds interessting, definitely have a look at https://nfc.toys/ for even deeper research into this.
  cybersecurity · research · reverse engineering · hardware
• 2015

  TI-84 Plus programs for cryptography problems

  ↗
  I was allowed my TI-84 during a hard MSc cryptography exam, so I implemented everything we touched upon the course as TI-84 programs so I could simply not fail the exam.
  cryptography
• 2014

  Automatically finding undocumented ISP commands in the NXP LPC microcontroller family

  pdf ↗
  The LPC2148 documentation lists 13 ISP commands; the silicon ships with 14. This paper automates finding that fourteenth, undocumented command across the NXP LPC bootloader family, where it turns out to be everywhere.
  cybersecurity · research · reverse engineering · hardware
• 2014

  Privacy enhancing technologies in social networks

  pdf ↗
  Written while the GDPR was still a draft: three technologies that might give social network users control over their own data, and why each falls short on its own.
  cybersecurity · privacy · research
• 2014

  Tor vs NSA

  pdf ↗
  Written in the immediate aftermath of the Snowden leaks: can Tor protect you from the NSA? Conclusion at the time: against mass surveillance, yes; against targeted attention, no.
  cybersecurity · research