Image: schlarp.com · Everything I own, owned
Five peripherals' firmware audited with Claude Opus
Chaz Schlarp gave Claude each device's firmware and update tool and asked it to document the update protocol and check security. Across five devices (a webcam, a monitor, a microphone, a capture card and a light) the work took about 13 hours and 98 prompts. It found a range of weak update and access protections, which he reports he shared with the vendors.
The full story
Chaz Schlarp pointed Claude Opus 5 at the firmware of five gadgets on his desk: a webcam, a monitor, a microphone, a capture card and a key light. For each one he downloaded the manufacturer's firmware and update tool, loaded them into his reverse-engineering set-up, told Claude what he wanted to understand, and let it work.
Across about 13 hours and 98 prompts, Claude found a full plaintext command shell inside the microphone, a way to switch off the webcam's activity light while it records, and a key light that accepts memory writes from anyone on the Wi-Fi. Each device has a GitHub repository of the generated documentation and scripts, most of it tested against the real hardware. He says he reported the problems to the vendors.
Security research, so the findings are described at a high level here. The author warns against putting these devices on untrusted networks.
How it was done
Tools
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Sources
From the maker's own write-up or code. We summarise what they report; we haven't tested it ourselves.
- Schlarp: Everything I own, owned
"Everything I own, owned": the method, what was found in each device, and links to the per-device repositories.