Protect the code

[Jerson]

The subject of code protection came up in one of the classes I attended at Microchip's 2007 Masters Conference earlier this month.

According to the information I received, if the CP bit is set: So far, no one has come up with a way to beat it short of a physically invasive method--microscopic examination of the die.

Russ

I have heard these quotes before. All I know of cracking devices is, that it's as simple as burgling a house. When you leave home, you put the biggest padlock you have on your door and bolt it down. When a burglar strikes, he reverses the procedure. The last time I read up on this topic, I learnt about using devices out of spec (power/timing) to beat various protection schemes. The power glitch is one very interesting technique and is sucessfully used by 8051 hackers. A related phenomenon is when you have the flash being corrupted by mere power on/off cycles. BTW : the Rst pin in the 8051 family usually is the VPP pin. Doesn't that say enough? I am almost sure that most flash micros are prone to this type of failure.