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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Security Bits - How to...

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Zonker

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Joined: 18/08/2012
Location: United States
Posts: 767
Posted: 12:39pm 26 Sep 2016
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I was wondering if there is a way to "lock-out" the MCU IC from being read back with the PICkit-3 (or any other shooter)...

Can you set a security bit in a Register with MPE..? I haven't read up on this yet... Just wondering if it could be done...

Thanks Gent's..!
 
Phil23
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Joined: 27/03/2016
Location: Australia
Posts: 1667
Posted: 02:04pm 26 Sep 2016
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As in protecting a commercial product?

Think I've seen another thread discussing a unique serial number that could be read from the PIC. From memory one didn't exist.

How about this for a Band-Aid solution.

Add a single DS18B20 to the project & read it's serial number in the code for a security check.

Doesn't stop someone extracting the code as a Hex file, but I'm not sure how hard the Hex is to reverse engineer.

Phil.
 
Zonker

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Joined: 18/08/2012
Location: United States
Posts: 767
Posted: 02:32pm 26 Sep 2016
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Hey Phil...

Yep, there are several good ways to do the same thing... But, I was wondering if there was a way to say "nope, can't read the flash" forever thing...

I'm not at the point of even wanting to, but, I know I have done this with other MCU's in the past... Just wondering... Will read up on it when I get the next "slice-O-time"... I know you should be able to... I was just wondering if anyone has done it before.. Edited by Zonker 2016-09-28
 
JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 4036
Posted: 10:09pm 26 Sep 2016
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It can be protected such that you can only erase/write but not read until you've erased.

It's so that you can stop anyone copying your code (or disassembling it etc).

It's the CONFIG bit CP (code protect) I think - check the datasheet. You can set some of the CONFIG bits to do things like disable JTAG, too.

JohnEdited by JohnS 2016-09-28
 
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