2 Aug 2026

Now, let me just preface this with a disclaimer:

… and get used to this puppo, as you may see this a few more times in this post :’).

In light of continuing my bumbling foray into the hardware hacking landscape, I bought a bottom-of-the-line $10 TP-Link TL-841N(EU) router off a random fellow on Facebook Marketplace, in a thrilling , high-stakes deal conducted in the middle of… a nearby mall.

My intention behind such a daring exchange was to practice the end-to-end process of pulling apart an IoT device to poke at it, access debug logs , potentially get a root shell , practice various kinds of firmware extraction (via UART & via on-chip flash memory), and even have a mosey about the filesystem for some potential security vulnerabilities later down the road.

Here’s a short overview of the journey so far, documented below:

1. Cracking it open: Finding the UART & getting connected 2. Dumping the firmware ( Method 1. - UART & tftp ) 3. Dumping the firmware ( Method 2.…