What if you could build your own embedded security tools, glitching devices for a fraction of the cost that you might expect. Like having a $150,000 laser setup for less than $500. A talk at Black Hat USA 2024 says you can. Sam Beaumont (Panth13r), Director of Transportation, mobility and cyber physical systems at NetSPI, and Larry Trowell (patch), Director of hardware embedded systems at NetSPI, along with a team of others, say that you can. Their talk, Laser Beams & Light Streams: Letting Hackers Go Pew Pew, Building Affordable Light-Based Hardware Security Tooling, should be a wake up call for all IoT and OT device vendors who should defend our IoT and OT devices, even against the unlikely attacks. Because soon enough, those attacks will become likely.

Too few vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (ICS) are assigned CVEs because of client non-disclosure agreements. This results in repeatedly discovering the same vulnerabilities for different clients, especially in critical infrastructure. Don C. Weber from IOActive shares his experiences as an ICS security professional and suggests improvements, including following the SANS best practices for ICS security..

At DEF CON 32, in the ICS village, researchers disclosed vulnerabilities in home and commercial solar panel systems that could potentially disrupt the grid. Dan Berte, Director of IoT security for Bitdefender, discusses his more than a decade in IoT, how the vendor maturity often isn’t there for our smart TVs or even for our solar panels, so reporting vulnerabilities sometimes goes nowhere. That doesn’t stop defenders like Dan, who, along with his team, work hard to change and to educate the industry.