Secured MCU Breaker Experts!

Extract PLD IC Source Code from PLD chip memory, crack PLD IC tamper resistance system and disable the security fuse bit, readout the firmware from PLD IC memory;

Extract PLD IC Source Code from PLD chip memory, crack PLD IC tamper resistance system and disable the security fuse bit, readout the firmware from PLD IC memory

Obviously, in a floating gate memory cell, the floating gate itself cannot be accessed. Its voltage is controlled through capacitive coupling with the external nodes of the device. Often, the floating-gate transistor is modelled by a capacitor equivalent circuit called the capacitor model. In practice, write/erase characteristics for many EEPROM/Flash memories are close to that of a charge/discharge of a capacitor. Meanwhile there are some differences in how the charge/discharge process takes place in real memory cells. There is an initial delay between the time the voltages are applied to the cell, and the charge starting to be removed or injected.

This delay is caused by the need for very high electric fields to be created inside the floating-gate transistor to start the injection or tunnelling process. Some EEPROM cells have been reported to have nonuniformity during the erase operation. As a result, it might take longer to erase a half-charged cell than a fully-charged cell. In addition, an ideal capacitor discharges exponentially: q = q0 e−t. Applied to the floating gate, that would mean that after t=10 the charge is totally removed from the cell.In practice this doesn’t happen, because the  parameters of the cell’s transistor change as the charge is removed from its floating gate. All the above-mentioned problems could seriously affect data remanence in floating-gate memories.

The main difficulty with analysis of the floating-gate memory devices, especially EEPROM and Flash, is the variety of different designs and implementations from many semiconductor manufacturers. There are hundreds of different types of floating-gate transistor, each with its own characteristics and peculiarities. It means that for security applications where data remanence could cause problems, careful testing should be applied to the specific non-volatile memory device used in the system.

Extract PLD IC Firmware include program of flash memory and data of eeprom memory, PLD IC embedded content can be cloned and copy the code to new PLD chip;

Extract PLD IC Firmware include program of flash memory and data of eeprom memory, PLD IC embedded content can be cloned and copy the code to new PLD chip;

Programmed floating-gate memories cannot store information forever. Various processes (such as field-assisted electron emission and ionic contamination) cause the floating gate to lose the charge, and go faster at higher temperatures. Another failure mode in the very thin tunnel oxides used in Flash memories is programming disturb, where unselected erased cells adjacent to selected cells gain charge when the selected cell is written.

This is not enough to change the cell threshold sufficiently to upset a normal read operation, but could cause problems to the data retention time and should be considered during measurement of the threshold voltage of the cells for data analysis and information recovery. Typical guaranteed data retention time for EPROM, EEPROM and Flash memories are 10, 40 and 100 years respectively.

Extract PLD MCU Code from program memory and data eeprom, cut off the fuse bit embedded inside PLD chip by MCU cracking technique and readout code from PLD.

Extract PLD MCU Code from program memory and data eeprom, cut off the fuse bit embedded inside PLD chip by MCU cracking technique and readout code from PLD

The changes in the cell threshold voltage caused by write/erase cycles are particularly apparent in virgin and freshly-programmed cells. It is possible to differentiate between programmed-and-erased and never-programmed cells, especially if the cells have only been programmed and erased once, since virgin cell characteristics will differ from the erased cell characteristics. The changes become less noticeable after ten program/erase cycles.

Decapsulate ARM MCU package and extract ARM Chip locked memory content from ARM MCU memory needs to get access to databus of ARM MCU by cracking MCU fuse;

Decapsulate ARM MCU package and extract ARM Chip locked memory content from ARM MCU memory needs to get access to databus of ARM MCU by cracking MCU fuse

Another phenomenon which helps with this is overerasing. If the erase cycle is applied to an already-erased cell, it leaves the floating gate positively charged, thus turning the memory transistor into a depletion-mode transistor. To avoid this problem, some devices, for example Intel’s original ETOX devices, first program all cells to 0’s before erasing them to 1’s. In later devices this problem was solved by redesigning the cell to avoid excessive overerasing, however even with this protection there is still a noticeable threshold shift when a virgin cell is programmed and erased.

Extract ARM IC Embeded Program from ARM Microcontroller memory, crack ARM microprocessor security fuse bit by focus ion beam and readout the code from MCU;

Extract ARM IC Embeded Program from ARM Microcontroller memory, crack ARM microprocessor security fuse bit by focus ion beam and readout the code from MCU

The amount of trapped charge can be detected by measuring the gate-induced drain leakage current of the cell, or its effect can be observed indirectly by measuring the threshold voltage of the cell. In older devices, which had the reference voltage for the sense amplifier tied to the device supply voltage, it was often possible to do this by varying the device supply voltage. In newer devices, it is necessary to change the parameters of the reference cell used in the IC firmware reverse engineering process, either by re-wiring portions of the cell circuitry or by using undocumented test modes built into the device by manufacturers.

Extract ARM MCU IC Chip embedded firmware from program memory and data memory, unlock secured microcontroller by focus ion beam facilities and copy extracted code from open microprocessor;

Extract ARM MCU IC Chip embedded firmware from program memory and data memory, unlock secured microcontroller by focus ion beam facilities and copy extracted code from open microprocessor;

There are two basic processes that allow placing the electrons on the floating gate – Fowler-Nordheim tunnelling and channel hot electron (CHE) injection. Both processes are destructive to the very thin dielectric between the floating gate and the channel of a transistor.

As a result, the number of possible cycles is limited because the floating gate slowly accumulates electrons, causing a gradual increase in the storage transistor’s threshold voltage and programming time. After a certain amount of program/erase cycles (typical values were represented in Table 1) it is no longer possible to erase or program the cell. Another negative effect (which is the main restoring failure mode for Flash memory) is negative charge trapping in the gate oxide. It inhibits CHE injection and tunnelling, changes the write and erase times of the cell, and shifts its threshold voltage.

Extract FPGA Chip encrypted firmware from secured flash memory and ROM memory, the format will be binary or heximal which can be readout directly by universal programmer after unlock FPGA chip;

Extract FPGA Chip encrypted firmware from secured flash memory and ROM memory, the format will be binary or heximal which can be readout directly by universal programmer after unlock FPGA chip;

Unlike SRAM which has only two stable logic states, EPROM, EEPROM and Flash cells actually store analog values in the form of a charge on the floating gate of a MOS transistor. The floating-gate charge shifts the threshold voltage of the cell transistor and this is detected with a sense amplifier when the cell is read. The maximum charge the floating gate can accumulate varies from one technology to another and normally is between 103 and 105 electrons. For standard 5 V EEPROM cell, programming causes about a 3.5 V shift in the threshold level. Some modern Flash memory devices employ multiple level detection against IC flash copying, thus increasing the capacity of the memory. There are also memory devices with full analog design which store charge proportional to the input voltage.

Restore IC Chip Embeded Information from program memory and data memory, the type of IC include MCU, AVR, PLD, CPLD and FPGA chip with the format of heximal which can be readout from Microcontroller memory;

Restore IC Chip Embeded Information from program memory and data memory, the type of IC include MCU, AVR, PLD, CPLD and FPGA chip with the format of heximal which can be readout from Microcontroller memory;

Another important thing to keep in mind is that security information inside PIC18F2550 could be restored even if part of the memory is corrupted. Suppose an attacker has correctly restored only m = 115 bits of an n = 128 bits long secure key, or 90% of the information. Then he will have to search through n!/(m!(n–m)!) = 128!/(115!13!) = 2.12·1017 ~ 258 possible keys. Having 10,000 computers, each performing 1 billion key-search operations per second, the attacker will spend only 6 hours to search through all possible keys.

If only 80% of information or 103 bits of a 128-bit secure key are known, than an attacker will need 2.51·1026 ~ 288 tries. Having even 100 times the capability, the attacker will spend more than a million years searching for the key. So to be sure that symmetric 128-bit keys cannot be retrieved from memory, it should be left without power for the time necessary to corrupt 20% or more of the cells. If error correction for key data is used, this value should be increased correspondingly. In our experiments, we assumed that no error correction was used.

Winbond W79E201 Microcontroller Internal Memory Breaking

In order to carry out the Winbond W79E201 Microcontroller Internal Memory Breaking, engineer need to has the general idea about the security system as well as its protection mechanism in this Microcontroller, below we would like to introduce some features of it:

This bit is used to restrict the accessible region of the MOVC instruction. It can prevent the MOVC instruction in external program memory from  reading the internal program code.

When this bit  is set  to logic 0, a MOVC instruction in external program memory space will be able to access code only in  the external memory, not in the internal memory.

A MOVC instruction in internal program memory space will always be able to access the ROM data in both internal and external memory. If this bit is logic 1, there are no restrictions on the MOVC instruction.

This bit is used to enable/disable the encryption logic for code protection. Once encryption feature is enabled, the data presented on port 0 will be encoded via encryption logic. Only whole chip erase will reset this bit before Winbond W79E201 Microcontroller Internal Memory Breaking.

ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM RATINGS

Oscillator Control

W79E201 allow user to diminish the gain of on-chip  oscillator amplifier by using programmer to  set  the bit B7 of security register. Once B7 is set to 0, a  half of gain  will be decreased. Care must be  taken if user attempts to diminish the gain of oscillator amplifier, reducing a half of  gain  may improperly affect the external crystal operation at high frequency above 24 MHz. The value of R and C1,C2 may need some adjustment while running at lower gain.

Restore Winbond W78IE54 MCU Encrypted Heximal

As we all know that in the common situation, the status of a MCU W78IE54 will be set as encrypted, and only through disable the security fuse bit can Restore Winbond W78IE54 MCU Encrypted Heximal. hereby we would like to introduce the security system of W78IE54:

During the on-chip MTP-ROM programming mode, the MTP-ROM can be programmed and verified repeatedly. Until the code inside the MTP-ROM is confirmed OK, the code can be protected. The protection of MTP-ROM and those operations on it are described below.

special setting register

The W78IE54 has several Special Setting Registers, including the Security Register and Company/Device ID Registers, which can not be accessed in programming mode before Restore Winbond W78IE54 MCU Encrypted Heximal. Those bits of the Security Registers can not be changed once they have been programmed from high to low.

They can only be reset through erase-all operation. The contents of the Company ID and Device ID registers have been set in factory. The Security Register is located at the 0FFFFH of the LDROM space.

Lock bit
This bit is used to protect the customer’s program code in the W78E62B. It may be set after the programmer finishes the programming and verifies sequence. Once this bit is set to logic 0, both the MTP ROM data and Special Setting Registers can not be accessed again.