CESH 180 PCB RE: Cutting-edge AI-Assisted Analysis and Attacks

AI Acceleration · 3 days · Not assessed

About the course

This advanced course sits across the whole family and puts AI to work at each stage of PCB reverse engineering, with a clear eye on where it helps and where it wastes your time.

Your people use vision models for component identification, chip-marking OCR, and trace and netlist extraction from photographs and X-ray images. They drive large language models as an RE copilot for reading datasheets, working out pinouts, triaging firmware and writing analysis and harness scripts.

The course also covers deep-learning side-channel analysis, AI-assisted fault injection that searches and tunes glitch parameters far faster than a human can by hand, and automated triage of large target sets. The throughline is judgement: the model proposes, the engineer decides, and nobody ships a finding they cannot stand behind.

Want to know what to expect in the classroom? Find out more about our training approach and how we turn technical concepts into practical, hands-on skills.

Skills and topics covered

This list shows the various main topics we cover during the course:

Vision models for component identification
Chip-marking OCR
Trace and netlist extraction from images
X-ray interpretation with vision models
LLMs as a datasheet and pinout copilot
AI-assisted firmware triage
Generating analysis and harness scripts
Deep-learning side-channel analysis
AI-assisted glitch-parameter search
Automated triage of large target sets
Judging where AI helps and where it misleads

What will a new trainee gain?

A trainee who already thinks in terms of these tools learns to apply them to hardware properly, with the checks that stop a confident wrong answer from a model becoming a wrong finding. It lets your new entrants get useful output from AI on real RE work quickly, and builds the scepticism that keeps that output honest.

What will an experienced team member gain?

An experienced engineer learns to fold AI into a method they already trust, cutting the slow, repetitive parts of component ID, triage and glitch tuning without surrendering the parts that need judgement. For your organisation that is a real throughput gain on large jobs, achieved without lowering the standard of what goes in a report.

Who this course is for

This course is for hardware security professionals and reverse engineers who want to use AI effectively within existing PCB reverse engineering workflows. Some prior hardware RE knowledge is recommended, as the focus is on accelerating analysis with AI rather than teaching the underlying techniques from scratch. No specialist AI or machine-learning experience is required.

Not sure where you fit? Find out more about our training audience and prerequisites.

As someone who used to take things apart as a kid just to see how they worked (and usually got told off for it), this course hit the spot. If you’re the same – curious, technical, and always asking how does this actually work? – then you’ll love it. Highly recommended for anyone serious about hardware hacking, reverse engineering, or just unlocking that next level of cyber knowledge.

Jon from Baigent’s Information Security Services

This was a fantastic introduction to Hardware in general. Whether you’re interested in security, RE or just curious about how things work on a hardware level, this is a fantastic hands-on course!

Davey H

Required equipment, tools, and software

You will need a laptop with at least 8GB RAM preferably 16GB, an up to date and stable Operating System, and an Ethernet port / reliable Ethernet dongle.

This laptop must be fully under your control such that you can install tools, dependencies and run arbitrary code. It is often useful to have the ability to run virtual machines and any that we provide will be suitable for importing into VirtualBox. If you use a different hypervisor, ensure that you are confident about importing VMs from OVF file formats. Unfortunately we are unable to pause the course for technical difficulties as a result of the amount of material that we need to cover.

We will use a number of other tools during the course. We put together a goodie bag which directly relates to the activities in the course. The free goodie bag is yours to keep at the end of the course, just make sure you have enough luggage space to take it home. The exact details of what is in it will vary depending on availability but we always make it a useful and interesting collection. We provide any other tools needed to complete all the tasks set, aside from a laptop.

You don’t need to bring anything extra other than your enthusiasm!

Venue and travel information

The classroom

The classroom is well appointed, has good WiFi and hot and cold drinks, it’s spacious, comfortable, has plenty of power sockets, lots of natural light, and is wheelchair friendly. The course is delivered in English and digital versions of slides and handouts will be provided where appropriate.

Food and refreshments

Lunch and morning and afternoon snacks are provided so please make sure you let us know about any dietary needs at least a week before we get started. With the exception of the social night, all other meals are for you to organise. We suggest getting a hotel that provides breakfast, and there are many good restaurants in Manchester for your evening meals. We will try and facilitate additional social arrangements, but, this is down to the individuals present.

Staying in Manchester

There are a number of good and affordable hotels in the Manchester area. We are based in an area called Media City and we are in the same complex as the northern headquarters of the BBC. This means that there are lots of facilities locally and you could choose to not venture into the city centre.

Getting here

If you do choose to look further around there are good tram links that can take you into the city as well as to key travel hubs such as Piccadilly, the national railway station, and Manchester International Airport.

Please check the weather before you travel and bring suitable clothes for the season. If in doubt, assume you will need a waterproof coat and an umbrella. The locals will tell you that Manchester is one of the rainiest places in the world, its not actually true but it does drizzle more than you might expect, even in summer.

Ready to put AI to work on hardware?

Learn where AI can genuinely accelerate PCB reverse engineering and where engineering judgement still matters most. Over three days, you’ll apply modern AI tools across component identification, imaging, firmware triage, side-channel analysis and fault injection to make established RE workflows faster and more scalable.

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