The CPU block
The CPU's goal is to process information. This is the core of the system and is your ultimate target in a penetration test. In the vast majority of cases, the CPUs you will be testing will have a von Neumann architecture (that is, the bus for data and instructions is shared) and rarely a Harvard architecture (a separate bus for data and instructions). From a penetration testing point of view, Harvard architectures are less exposed to buffer overflows since these buffers typically contain data that cannot usually be executed.
CPU roles
The CPU itself will perform the following activities:
- Executing the different arithmetic and logic instructions, such as addition, multiplication, subtraction, division, and so on
- Reading and writing memory
- Managing the different hardware peripherals that are integrated with it, such as UART, SPI, cryptographic peripherals, storage peripherals, and so on
- Reacting to interrupts from, and communicating with...
