ControlThings Serial

A highly flexible serial interface tool made for penetration testers.

Installation:

As long as you have git and Python 3.8 or later installed, all you should need to do is:

pip3 install ctserial

Or better yet, if you have uv installed, install it in an isolated environment with:

uv tool install ctserial

uv also lets you try the tool out without installing it by running:

uvx ctserial

Usage:

First, start the tool from a terminal. Then connect to your serial device and interact with it. For example:

ctserial> connect /dev/your-serial-device
ctserial> send hex deadc0de                   # sends actual hex, so 4 bytes
ctserial> send Dead Code 国                    # sends full utf-8 string without spaces
ctserial> send "Dead Code 国"                  # Use quotes if you need spaces
ctserial> exit

Platform Independence

Python 3.6+ and all dependencies are available for all major operating systems. It is primarily developed on MacOS and Linux, but should work in Windows as well.

Development

If you are interested in modifying ctserial:

1. Install Python's Poetry package at https://python-poetry.org/.
2. Clone the ctserial github repository.
3. Open a termainal to the cloned repository.
4. Run poetry install to create a new virtual environment and install an editable instance of ctserial with its dependencies.

Author

• Justin Searle justin@controlthings.io