Communication reverse engineering

General
1

I’ve heard the podcast today (Great work Rick!)
It was mentioned that it is possible to monitor the communication lines between a machine to the PC - Where Can I learn this practice ? any special equipment required ?

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2

thanks!

it depends on the type/protocol of communication.

  • for tcp, use wireshark
  • for usb/ftdi, use usbpcap (install it with wireshark (option is disabled by default) and analyze the pcaps with wireshark)

since every reverse engineering project is so different, there aren’t really so many tutorials. basically you just make a pcap, and then after that it’s different for every device.

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3

Is there a way to monitor the RS 485-0232 directly or you have to do it on the USB level?

4

Is there a need for any physical device on the lines to do that?

5

If it’s a virtual com port it typically works (usually the protocol is ftdi). For actual serial cables I haven’t found a way to intercept communication and it probably requires specialized hardware

6

Depending on the device, some control software also features logs that directly print out the serial commands, which can be easier to parse and decompose.

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