Learning with DVRF - Intro

Getting into any kind of security is a fun and enjoyable experience. I have started to check out hardware hacking as it relates to all kinds of industries and sounds fun. Some of the things I have been exploring is ICS/SCADA hardware, software platforms relating to ICS/SCADA (like the Cybati challenge write-ups), and recently, hardware like network devices. While there have been awesome articles put out there (like this) for hardware hacking, I still like to play and learn with the software side.

It has been fun seeing the Damn Vulnerable Router Firmware (DVRF) project grow with the author b1ack0wl contributing more to the project with challenges and related write-ups. In my process to learn more about different architectures (like MIPS) and firmware hacking, I have been exploring and learning with the DVRF project. I have based some articles on the blog posts from the original author and wrote up new blog posts with the methods I performed at each step. Each blog article will break out a major step into concise instructions to aid in learning with the DVRF project. A few of these steps will cover some information from the original author. Each technical post will show how to perform each step with detailed instructions. Hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading!

Below are the direct links to the posts in this series:
#1 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/07/learning-with-dvrf-step-1.html
#2 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/07/learning-with-dvrf-step-2.html
#3 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/07/learning-with-dvrf-step-3.html
#4 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/07/learning-with-dvrf-step-4.html
#5 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-5-is-this.html
#6 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-6-binary-ninja.html
#7 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-7-pwndbg.html
#8 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-8-what-mips.html
#9 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-9-hello-mips.html
#10 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-10-gdb-you-know.html #11 part 1 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-11-part-1-lets.html
#11 part 2 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/08/learning-with-dvrf-step-11-part-2-lets.html
#11 part 3 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/09/learning-with-dvrf-step-11-part-3-lets.html #11 part 4 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/09/learning-with-dvrf-step-11-part-4-lets.html #11 part 5 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/09/learning-with-dvrf-step-11-part-5-lets.html
#12 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/09/learning-with-dvrf-step-12-stack-buffer.html
#13 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/09/learning-with-dvrf-step-13-stack-buffer.html 
#14 : http://vivirytech.blogspot.com/2016/10/learning-with-dvrf-step-14-stack-buffer.html