Unusual Radio Frequency Penetration Testing (CESH-20x)
Instructor: Felix and Adam
This course is not yet ready for booking… But here is a sneak preview of what we nearly have ready!
Introduction
Modern devices are whispering to the ether. Every door lock, drone, meter, vehicle, and wearable transmits something. These signals are packed with data, commands, and… mistakes. Most security professionals stop at the antenna, but this course takes you further. The Unusual Radio Frequency Penetration Testing course is where electromagnetic espionage meets practical exploitation. You will learn how to interpret, intercept, and interfere with signals that exist between the digital and the physical world.
This course blends elements of radio-frequency analysis and protocol reverse engineering. It focuses on uncovering hidden channels, manipulating wireless protocols, and understanding the electromagnetic emissions of real systems. Whether it’s a satellite downlink, an industrial telemetry bus, or a proprietary IoT beacon, we show you how to think, listen, decode, and attack.
Expect a technically deep, hands-on experience that moves far beyond SDR basics and into the realm of professional-grade RF analysis and exploitation.
Course Content
Participants will move from foundational electromagnetic theory through to advanced interception and exploitation. Core areas include:
- Health and safety (radiation, grounding, shielding)
- RF theory and spectrum fundamentals
- Hardware and software for signal acquisition
- Modulation schemes and demodulation strategies
- Spectrum reconnaissance and signal hunting
- Reverse engineering unknown wireless protocols
- Exploiting poorly implemented encryption and encoding
- Analogue vs digital signal analysis
- Signal fingerprinting and classification
- Hardware-level RF interfacing (connectors, probes, filters)
- SDR toolchain mastery (GNU Radio, SDR#, URH, GQRX for example)
- Antenna theory, design, and practical use
- Direction finding and localisation
- RF propagation concepts
- Layer 2 and above protocol challenges
- Packet injection
- RF fuzzing
- Exploitation over the air
Deeper Description
Signals hide everywhere. This course teaches you to find them, understand them, and exploit them. You will learn how to capture and demodulate live signals, fingerprint devices, and reverse engineer unknown or proprietary radio protocols. Expect to get hands-on with spectrum analysers, SDR platforms, and professional-grade RF gear.
We start by understanding how data travels through the air, from the simplest amplitude shift keying to advanced spread-spectrum and OFDM schemes. We then explore interception and manipulation: how to identify what you’re hearing, recover data, and test resilience to intentional interference or replay.
By the end of the course, you’ll have the skills to identify wireless vulnerabilities in the less common parts of embedded systems, IoT devices, and industrial control networks. You’ll also gain an appreciation for the physics involved, from antenna design to electromagnetic propagation and shielding.
The course is designed for professionals already comfortable with hardware hacking or network testing, but open to anyone with a strong technical background and curiosity for signals.
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