Audit Embedded Firmware Security
Audit the extracted artifact as evidence tied to a device, version, acquisition path, and extraction manifest. Do not execute an extracted init system or treat strings and filenames as proof of reachable behavior.
Establish artifact and trust provenance
Record image hash, product and hardware claims, partitions, filesystems, architecture, boot artifacts, signing and verification metadata, update format, rollback controls, recovery images, build identifiers, packages, native hardening, and extraction limitations.
Copy assets/firmware-trust-ledger.template.json into the workarea. Read references/firmware-audit-method.md before connecting an extracted component to boot, update, service, or persistence behavior.
Trace reachable security boundaries
Map startup and privilege transitions, users and groups, service listeners, IPC, parsers, web routes, update and provisioning code, credentials, keys, certificates, debug paths, logging, storage, firewall rules, kernel and module configuration, and recovery behavior. Trace candidates into code and configuration rather than reporting inventory alone.
Use operate-firmware-laboratory for import, extraction, comparison, emulation, and managed tool operation. Route whole-product and lifecycle risk to assess-embedded-iot-security; this skill owns static firmware audit reasoning.
Deliver
Tie every candidate to artifact hashes, paths, startup or call reachability, attacker position, privilege or identity, device state, fleet reuse, control comparison, and a bounded validation plan. Mark extraction ambiguity and version-to-device uncertainty explicitly.