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Re: Is protected flash secure?

From Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups comp.arch.embedded
Subject Re: Is protected flash secure?
Date 2017-02-16 20:54 -0800
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <871suxo1rs.fsf@nightsong.com> (permalink)
References <1be0d7bb-4d01-4993-973b-896a6f4303d4@googlegroups.com>

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Klaus Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> writes:
> Is there really such a thing as a safe micro controller which memory
> is protected from Reverse Engineering conducted by a Russian or
> Chinese firm?

A typical MCU won't have serious protection but some security processors
will, including ones that aren't very expensive because they're intended
for use in high-volume applications like payment cards.  A very
determined and high-resource attacker will be hard to stop, especially
if they can get their hands on lots of individual units.  But you can
make it pretty hard.  Today's smart cards evolved over a many-year
technical arms race between cable TV companies and cable pirates.  These
days the smart card manufacturers seem to have the upper hand, though
maybe the advantage will flip again some day.

The book "Security Engineering" by Ross Anderson is now somewhat dated,
but it's good reading about this type of subject.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html

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Thread

Is protected flash secure? Klaus Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> - 2017-02-16 14:41 -0800
  Re: Is protected flash secure? Johann Klammer <klammerj@NOSPAM.a1.net> - 2017-02-17 00:22 +0100
  Re: Is protected flash secure? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-02-16 20:38 -0700
  Re: Is protected flash secure? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2017-02-16 20:54 -0800
  Re: Is protected flash secure? Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2017-02-17 12:38 +0000

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