Look Who it Was Random video

DEF CON 17 - Travis Goodspeed - An Open JTAG Debugger

1,625 views · Published 16 November 2013 · 42:04 · Indexed 8 November 2026

Channel: DEFCONConference · 2013 · Science & Technology

Watch on YouTube

An Open JTAG Debugger
Travis Goodspeed Engineer of Superior Buckles, Goodspeed & Gourneau

While it's simple enough to build a "Wiggler" JTAG adapter for the PC parallel port, there is very little open hardware for performing high-speed programming of JTAG devices by USB. This lecture introduces the GoodFET, an open source USB JTAG adapter which can be reflashed to support the programming and debugging of any number of chips. Both hardware and firmware are compared to that of a similar, commercial design.

This lecture will also cover the details of the JTAG standard and a few of its competitors, as well as the possibility of attacking these debugging modes when access has been denied or restricted.

Travis Goodspeed is a neighborly reverse engineer from Southern Appalachia. He has been exploiting and reverse engineering wireless sensors since writing the first stack overflow exploit for them in 2007. His recent projects have included a timing attack on the MSP430 bootstrap loader and an extra-neighborly party-mode belt buckle in the shape of Tennessee.

For copies of the slides and additional materials please see the DEF CON 17 Archive here: https://defcon.org/html/links/dc-archives/dc-17-archive.html

More from this channel