Automatic Symbol Resolution on Embedded Platforms by the Example of Smart TV Device

Abstract

Smart TV devices are gaining increasingly more popularity. Due to their nature, Smart TVs can access a lot of sensitive data. This is one of the reasons why the Smart TV has become a popular target of hacking recently. Manufacturers try to make such attacks more difficult, and one of the methods they use is the removal of symbols from the firmware. In principle, this would prevent or significantly hinder the preparation of malwares or homebrew that could run on different firmware versions. This article is focused on developing algorithms for automatic symbol resolution. We proposed two automatic symbol resolution methods designed for Smart TVs. Presented methods were tested on the firmwares of the most popular Smart TV manufacturers’, Samsung and LG, devices. Furthermore, an original framework is presented, which automatically locates the desired function in the binaries based on characteristic strings used in or near searched function. The developed framework is commonly used by homebrew developers (e.g., SamyGO) and releases developers from hardcoding function’s addresses for different firmwares.