Overview
Embedded systems sit at the core of modern infrastructure, from industrial control systems and connected devices to automotive platforms and smart environments. Yet the communication protocols that link their components are often undocumented, lightly tested, and rarely analyzed from an attacker’s perspective.
When vulnerabilities appear in embedded and IoT systems, they rarely come from exotic zero-days. More often, they stem from exposed interfaces, weak protocol assumptions, or credentials and sensitive data flowing where they shouldn’t. Understanding how these protocols behave in real environments, and how attackers interact with them, is a critical skill for today’s security professionals.
To address this gap, Cyber Helmets is launching a new hands-on workshop focused on embedded protocol analysis and exploitation.
📅 26–27 February 2026
🕒 2pm–8pm CET
💻 Live online
🧪 Guided hands-on labs using simulated hardware interfaces and authentic protocol traces
👉 Hands-on action with Hack The Box infrastructure and hardware-focused challenges
Why you should attend: A practical, attacker-oriented approach
Foundations of Embedded Protocol Analysis & Exploitation is a two-day, guided workshop built around how attackers actually approach embedded systems.
Across two intensive online sessions, participants will:
- Work hands-on with simulated hardware targets
- Analyze real communication captures from genuine devices
- Step through attacker-oriented workflows
- Apply practical exploitation techniques used in hardware security research
The workshop is designed to move from protocol observation and decoding to practical exploitation, helping participants build a repeatable methodology for approaching unknown embedded communication systems.
What participants can expect
This workshop focuses on real-world attacker workflows rather than isolated theoretical concepts. Throughout the two days, participants will:
- Analyze communication behavior across embedded components
- Identify exposed or undocumented interfaces
- Decode protocol structures from captured traces
- Extract credentials and sensitive data from communication flows
- Apply practical exploitation techniques in guided lab scenarios
The experience is delivered through live, expert-led instruction, supported by guided hands-on labs and simulated hardware environments.
The workshop is also enriched with Hack The Box infrastructure and hardware-focused challenges, allowing participants to continue practicing beyond the live sessions.
Who this workshop is for
Hardware security beginners, red teamers, reverse engineers, IoT pentesters, firmware analysts, and security engineers with basic familiarity with Linux or scripting. If you’ve read about UART, SPI, or embedded interfaces but never analyzed or exploited them end-to-end, this workshop is for you.
Key takeaways
→ A deep understanding of embedded communication protocols and how they are used in hardware devices.
→ Hands-on experience analyzing embedded protocols using real-world captures and signals.
→ The ability to extract sensitive information from IoT devices through hardware-level analysis
→ Confidence in identifying and assessing hardware interfaces on embedded devices.
→ The skills to analyze real-world attacker workflows when assessing the security of IoT and embedded systems.
Meet the instructors
Learn directly from field experts and see how they approach real-world hardware and IoT security challenges.
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Konstantinos Mokos
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Ilias Fotakis
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Anastasios MeletlidisCybersecurity researcher
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Join the workshop
Join us for two days of hands-on embedded protocol analysis and exploitation.
📅 26–27 February 2026
🕒 2pm–8pm CET, Live online
👉 View full details and join us here: