We are now entering the final days of the Sword of Secrets campaign. What started as an idea for a small hardware CTF board has turned into a project that has gained far more support than I expected. I want to take a moment to thank everyone who backed, shared, and encouraged me along the way. It has been an amazing journey so far!
As the campaign comes to a close, I have been thinking about what comes next. One of the things I realized is that I want to accelerate offering workshops around the Sword. My original plan was to have participants solder wires or clip onto flash pins with SOIC clips. That approach is authentic, but it also means hardcore soldering (which can be a bit of a safety hazard for the uninitiated!). While the hardcore method is still there (and if you want to go that route, the campaign offers SOIC clips), I wanted to create an easier way in.
That is when I remembered the online emulator I had built for the Sword of Secrets, which you can still try out here: swordofsecrets.com. That project gave me the idea to build a serial interface that emulates flash operations. It lets me toggle pins, send SPI commands, and perform flash operations without touching a soldering iron. In workshops, this means beginners can start interacting with the board right away, while advanced users can still go for the real hardware challenge.
With this interface in place, I could finally shape the workshop experience the way I wanted. The goal is to give beginners a guided path into real hardware hacking: start by examining a PCB, learn to recognize the important chips, and walk through a datasheet to see how the component actually behaves. From there, participants can use the serial interface to run the same kinds of low-level operations that professionals perform. The tools may differ depending on skill level, but the process and mindset stay authentic: How to approach a piece of hardware with confidence, how to map it out, and how to communicate with it on its own terms. Watching someone make that leap for the first time is one of the best parts of this project.
I will be running more workshops soon and I want to keep improving them. If you would like me to host one, please reach out! I am always happy to bring this experience to new groups and share the world of hardware hacking.
And again, thank you for being part of the Sword of Secrets journey. It is the final week of the campaign and I cannot wait to see these boards in your hands! ⚔️
Gili
