need advice on selling my design

[Luciano]

Hi,

(Copy Protection in Modern Microcontrollers).

See this link:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/mcu_lock.html

The latest paper on this subject:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-630.html

Semi-invasive attacks – A new approach to hardware security analysis
Sergei P. Skorobogatov
April 2005, 144 pages
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-630.pdf

Best regards,

Luciano

[T.Jackson]

Hi Luciano

I think the copy protection offered in PIC's is pretty strong. I recall seeing a project Published in the Silicon Chip magazine sometime ago where the author not only set the copy protect fuse, but also made it so that the actual program itself would be erased if any activity was detected on the programming pin.

So in other words, if this pin weren’t grounded, the internal program itself would erase the entire flash memory. This method is commonly known as suicide protection. Very extreme and used extensively throughout the 90's on some arcade game boards costing $2,000 upwards.


Best regards,
Trent Jackson