SANS 2025: SANS@Night - SBOMs the Hard Way: Hacking Bob the Minion

This presentation delves into the intricate process of generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for the Bob the Minions WiFi router by Davolink—a device whose firmware isn't publicly available. Traditional SBOM creation methods rely on readily accessible firmware, but Davolink's restricted release policies necessitated an unconventional approach.

This talk covers the step-by-step journey of hardware disassembly, firmware extraction via SPI flash and JTAG/SWD interfaces, and the tools and techniques employed. Finally, we'll demonstrate how the recovered firmware is used to generate a comprehensive SBOM, highlighting any security vulnerabilities discovered and reported to the vendor.

This session aims to provide attendees with practical insights into overcoming SBOM generation challenges in the IoT domain through hands-on hardware hacking, and leveraging the firmware and SBOMs for vulnerability discovery, as well as security improvement.