Firmware & Embedded Binary Reverse Engineering
Analysis of authorized firmware images and embedded binaries — filesystem extraction, hardcoded secret discovery, cryptographic usage review and update-mechanism security for devices you build, deploy or must assess.
Verified Solvex Specialist
Verified by SolvexDirect specialist contact for Solvex engagements
What this means. An authorized Solvex administrator registered and approved this exact public identity. What it does not. Solvex has not inspected the account on the platform, and this is not the platform's own verification.
Solvex specialists never ask for your passwords, recovery phrases, one-time codes, or payments to a personal account. Work, scope and invoices are agreed in writing through the official channels on this site.
Signed authorization required. This engagement is performed only against systems you own or are contractually authorized to have tested, under an agreed scope. See the responsible testing policy.
What's covered
- Firmware image structure and header analysis
- Filesystem extraction and component inventory
- Hardcoded credential, key and certificate discovery
- Cryptographic implementation and key-handling review
- Update mechanism security: signature verification and rollback protection
- Exposed service, debug interface and configuration analysis
- Third-party component and known-vulnerability identification
- Boot chain and integrity verification review where applicable
What you receive
- Firmware analysis report with severity-ranked findings
- Component and dependency inventory with known-vulnerability mapping
- Hardcoded secret findings and rotation guidance
- Update-mechanism security assessment
- Remediation recommendations prioritised for a device lifecycle
Evidence and reporting
How the work is kept honest- Evidence, frozen at issuanceFindings tie to something observed. When the report is issued, the evidence behind it is frozen in the same transaction and cannot be edited afterwards.
- A signed reportAn Ed25519 signature covers both the report content and the delivered file. Alter a byte of either and verification fails.
- Signed scope firstTesting starts only after written scope and signed authorization for systems you own or are entitled to have tested.
Anyone holding a Solvex report can verify it publicly without seeing its contents.
Our boundaries
What this engagement does not do, stated before it starts.
- Written authorization required — your own device, or documented permission to analyse
- Physical hardware attacks (glitching, chip-off, side channel) are scoped separately
- No circumvention of vendor protections on devices you do not own
- Findings reflect the image version supplied at a point in time
How this engagement runs
- 01
Intake
Tell us the system, the goal and the constraints. If the work is not a good fit, we say so before anyone is invoiced.
- 02
Scope and authorization
Written scope and signed authorization before anything is touched. Security testing runs only against systems you own or are contractually entitled to have tested.
- 03
Investigation or build
Specialists matched to the work. Findings are proven by hand — scanner output is a lead, never a finding.
- 04
Evidence
Every finding ties to something observed. When a report is issued, its evidence is frozen in the same transaction, so what backed the report cannot change afterwards.
- 05
Delivery
A signed report: an Ed25519 signature over both the content and the file, with a short verification reference you can read down a phone.
- 06
Verification and retest
Anyone holding the report can verify it publicly without seeing its contents. Fixes are retested as part of the engagement — “fixed” means we confirmed it.
Questions we are asked
- What do you find most often?
- Hardcoded credentials, and update mechanisms that do not verify signatures. The first means one extracted image compromises every deployed unit; the second means anyone who can reach the device can install their own firmware. Both are usually fixable before shipping and effectively unfixable at scale afterwards.
- We only have a binary blob, no filesystem. Still useful?
- Yes, though the ceiling is lower. Entropy analysis, embedded signatures, string recovery and structural analysis still surface a great deal. We will tell you up front what a monolithic image realistically permits.
- Do you need physical hardware?
- Not for image analysis, which is the bulk of this engagement. Physical access enables debug-interface and boot-chain work, which we scope separately so you are not paying for a lab you do not need.
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