Sign in

username:

password:



Not a member?

Search c54x



Search tips

Subscribe to c54x



c54x by Keywords

5409 | 5416 | AD5 | ADC | BIOS | Boot | Booting | Bootloader | C540 | C5402 | C5409 | C5416 | CCS | Codec | DMA | Dmad | DSK | DSKPlus | Dsplib | EVM | FFT | FIR | Flash | GPIO | HPI | Initialization | Interrupt | JTAG | LOG_printf | MCBSP | RFFT | RTDX | Sampling | STLM | UART | VC540

Discussion Groups

Discussion Groups | TMS320C54x | Firmware Protection

Technical discussions about the TI C54x DSPs (including the c5401, c5402, c5402a, c5404, c5407, c5409, c5409a, c5410, c5410a, c5416, c5420, c5421, c5441, c549, c5470 and c5471).

  

Post a new Thread

Firmware Protection - Rodrigo Rivas - Aug 21 16:56:00 2003



Hi ,
 
How do you protect the firmware in your custom boards ?
In our custom board, there is an external Flash in which reside the firmware. The firmware can fit in the on-chip RAM of the C5416, then after bootloading, the C5416 run from on-chip RAM.
 
Then the problem is how to protect the firmware that reside in the external Flash against copies ?
 
any help is welcome
Thanks in advance
 
Rodrigo Rivas


(You need to be a member of c54x -- send a blank email to c54x-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Re: Firmware Protection - Brian C. Lane - Aug 21 19:43:00 2003

Rodrigo Rivas wrote:

> Hi ,
>
> How do you protect the firmware in your custom boards ?
> In our custom board, there is an external Flash in which reside the
> firmware. The firmware can fit in the on-chip RAM of the C5416, then
> after bootloading, the C5416 run from on-chip RAM.
>
> Then the problem is how to protect the firmware that reside in the
> external Flash against copies ? The sort answer is "You can't". About all you can hope for is to obscure
it in some way, and anyone with a bit of skill and a JTAG debugger will
be able to crack that without too much effort.

Brian





(You need to be a member of c54x -- send a blank email to c54x-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Re: Firmware Protection - Andrew Xiang - Aug 21 19:52:00 2003

You cannot prevent it. But you can make it harder:
 
1. write messy code and implement messy hardware.
2. put a EEPROM with a fixed value and different on each board. encode a portion of your program using the code.
3. make the product dirt cheap so there is no incentive to copy.
 
that is all I can think of.
 
-Andrew
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Rodrigo Rivas
To: c...@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2003 12:56 PM
Subject: [c54x] Firmware Protection

Hi ,
 
How do you protect the firmware in your custom boards ?
In our custom board, there is an external Flash in which reside the firmware. The firmware can fit in the on-chip RAM of the C5416, then after bootloading, the C5416 run from on-chip RAM.
 
Then the problem is how to protect the firmware that reside in the external Flash against copies ?
 
any help is welcome
Thanks in advance
 
Rodrigo Rivas

_____________________________________



Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.




(You need to be a member of c54x -- send a blank email to c54x-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )