Intro to Firmware Extraction

Have you ever wondered if a cheap router smart camera robot vacuum you got thrifting was tampered with? Maybe you want to just want to work with an old piece of hardware but cannot find firmware online to bring it back to a known good state. Or maybe you want to see if a knockoff loT device has hidden functionality. If possible, extracting the firmware at the hardware level is a great place to start. I will outline how to identify devices that may be good candidates for firmware extraction, how to extract the firmware from EEPROM chips using the CH341A programmer and using the associated software.