topic Re: Kinetis protection from reading firmware, decapping? in Kinetis Microcontrollers

Kinetis protection from reading firmware, decapping?

arhi — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 11:11:04 GMT

Do Kinetis series of MCU's have the protective mesh on top of the mcu so probing after decap gets harder? (something TPU has for e.g.)

I have very little experience with secure applications and now I'm supposed to make device where it is very important firmware is not extracted so I was looking for different tamper proof solutions and found Kinetis to be interesting. K2 series especially, but I'm unable to find answer to two basic questions

1. how "tamper protection" actually works (can mcu detect tampering if there's no voltage source available? no battery backup, supercap etc? I guess cannot but .. read in few places that something is automatically erased on tamper so..). Some link to a document is highly appreciated :smileygrin:

2. protection from break-ic, mikatech, mikahk and similar "services", what is the hardware protection of the kinetis mcu series? Is there a intrusion detection mesh on top of the die or anything else? Here: https://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/prod_brief/K70PB.pdf I read that there is " Active wire-mesh tamper detect " but I don't see anywhere what that actually is :smileysad: and how does it work?! so explanation or "where to read info about it" is appreciated :smileyhappy:

Cortex M4 with USB is what I am looking for 150-180MHz, ideally tqfp for start (later I can move to bigger ones with bga package but for initial tests tqfp is hand solderable) so a suggestion of "secure" chip if I'm not looking in the right direction ... :smileygrin:

thanks
arhi

Re: Kinetis protection from reading firmware, decapping?

jingpan — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 03:31:46 GMT

Hi arhi,

In K2x serial, only K21 has ther tamper protect function. Information about security-related modules is not included in open document and is available only after a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) has been signed. To request an
NDA, please contact your local NXP sales representative.

If 150M above is must, K65,K70,K81 can meet your demand.

Regards

Re: Kinetis protection from reading firmware, decapping?

arhi — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 11:15:25 GMT

Thanks for the answer. I will never understand the point of hiding documentation behind NDA but what can I do about it :smileygrin:..

Going to check K65,K70 and K81 - many thanks!

all best

Re: Kinetis protection from reading firmware, decapping?

arhi — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 11:18:36 GMT

btw any demo boards available with K65/K70/K81 ?

Re: Kinetis protection from reading firmware, decapping?

jingpan — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 03:10:01 GMT

Of course. You can find TWR-K65F180M, TWR-POS-K81, TWR-K70F120M.