Reverse Engineering the TA-1042
06-29, 10:00–10:50 (America/Los_Angeles), Prime Dome

We'll discuss our reverse engineering of the TA-1042, a Digital Non-secure Voice Terminal (early digital military telephone).


My friend and I thought the TA-1042 telephone looked really cool, but nobody know how to make it work with switching equipment. With the help of an old IEEE paper and some old fashioned oscilloscopery, we managed to reverse engineer the state machine and figure out enough commands to make it function. The result was a custom open-source interface board and firmware based on the RP2040, which allows switching between 4 phones and interfacing the data over USB with a Nick's first custom USB protocol. I've done a series of YouTube videos on this you can check out beforehand.

Hi I'm Nick! Work mostly in software/infosec, but with a passion for electronics and hacking. Hobbies include film photography, videography, nutrition/health, poorly fixing cars, and walking my dog.

Seattle based hardware engineer with a background in RF and power electronics.