Hacking Embedded Linux Based Home Appliances

Embedded Linux is an interesting phenomenon. With millions of devices shipped to-day, from residential gateways to cellular phones, it may be Linux's biggest success story ever. However, it gets disproportionately small amount of interest from the open source community. Part of the blame is on the companies developing embedded Linux based products, which feel uncomfortable with the idea of opensource. However, even bigger problem can be the fact that embedded systems are perceived as black boxes which are very hard to hack, contrary to an "Open" PC. This paper tries to break this stigma by showing Linux developers how to hack various Linux based devices that they might already have at home.