Learning Bluetooth Hackery with BLE CTF

Do you want to get into tinkering and hacking Bluetooth LE devices?  Up until now, doing so was very much a DIY process.  You would have to find relevant documentation or videos, and then find various BLE devices to test on.  In order to make this learning process easier, I created a Bleutooth LE CTF, named BLECTF, which aims to teach the fundamentals of BLE connections, interactions, and hacking.

At its core, the CTF focuses on teaching BLE GATT service connection fundamentals.  The CTF runs a BLE GATT server on an ESP32 device with 20 flag based challenges.  Each challenge focuses on teaching different BLE functionality you would typically see in the wild.  Adventurous individuals who complete all 20 flags will obtain the skills needed to start exploring all things BLE in the world!

Building Kali Linux for Intel Edison

This documentation goes though the process of manually building a base Kali Linux image for the Intel Edison board. These steps were derived from frankensteining the edison build scripts for Debian Jessie and some of the Kali Linux ARM build scripts. All of the content from this post can be found in my github repo for this project here, along with pre compiled images (coming soon!) and ansible scripts for automated building.

Note, all of these steps were tested in Ubuntu Linux 14.04 x64 LTS. As of this writing, this OS/Version has the most support for doing Edison source builds. I have done these steps in other operating systems, but the process is not as clean due to bugs, script tweaks, etc.

This post is part of a three part series which will cover all of the following:
1. Manually building and installing Kali Linux for Intel Edison
2. Automatically building Kali Linux for Intel Edison with ansible
3. Downloading and installing precompiled images

This is the first post of the series and will cover the method for manually building Kali Linux images for Intel Edison. Stay tuned for followup posts...

Building Debian Linux for Intel Edison

This documentation goes though the process of building a base Debian Linux image via simple make files for the Intel Edison board. The make file method for building Debian images is very similar to my last post for building Yocto images from Intels make file method. The make files provided by Intel in the BSP Edison source package wrap the build process with scripts to make building an extremely simple process.

Creating Remote APT Package Repositories on Github

Creating remote apt repos on github

If you read my last blog post, you would know that I am really into deploying applications and systems with deb and rpm packages whenever possible. One of the things you will eventualy want to do, to make deb and rpm package deployment easier, is to create a remote apt or yum repo to host your packages. One of the cooler tricks I have come up with in recent times is creating apt/yum repos in obscure locations.

This aritical will go over how to host an apt repo inside of a git repo on github. This little trick has the following benifits:

1. free hosting for you apt repo
2. publicly availability
3. provide a single location for source code and packages.

Simple Deb Package Creation

Building a Simple Deb Package

All of the hip kids today are into deploying packages and complex systems with things like Ansible, Docker, Chef, Puppet, Vagrent and Salt Stack. While these deployment tools are awesome, you should not forget about good old fashioned system packages for application deployment. I fully understand there are times when some of these newer deployment tools are a better fit, but, as time goes on, I run across more and more overly complicated and convoluted deployment procedures using these new tools when a simple deb or rpm package could be used. Maybe Im just oldschool, but whenever possible, I prefer to handle application deployment with system packages, such as debs or rpms.

Creating deb packages to deploy applications in Debian or Ubuntu is a fairly simple process. However, I have found that the majority of existing documentation for doing so is overly verbose or more complex than needed. This writeup aims to summaries the process of creating deb packages in just a few simple steps.

Here is a short summary of what this writeup covers:

1. How to create a bare bones deb package
2. How to optionally add package configuration files
3. How to optionally add package dependancies
4. How to optionally add package scripts that run before or after installation

Using Make for Easy Yocto Builds On Intel Edison

This documentation goes though the process of building a Yocto Linux image via simple make files for the Intel Edison board. The make file method for building Yocto images is much simpler than the manual build methods. The make files provided by Intel in the BSP Edison source package wrap the build process with scripts to make building an extremely simple process.

Manually Building Yocto Images for the Intel Edison Board from Source

This documentation goes though the process of manually building a Yocto Linux image for the Intel Edison hardware. The build techniques used here do not use the easier make file method which is now available in the Intel Edison Board Support Package (BSP) source. For documentation on building via the make file method, I will do a follow up post which explains that process in detail.

The manual build method used in this documentation allows for easier customization of the base Yocto image. Customizations can include tweaks such as changing the base kernel, adding extra kernel modules, adding base application packages, etc.