Is it possible to extract firmware from nrf51822 even with MPU enabled?

[joc]

Hi, I'm recently concerned with the latent risk that nrf51822 might be hacked by extracting the firmware also known as "snarf"ing. And I know there is Memory Proection Unit(MPU) to prevent code region be readback by SWD. But I still can not estimate the risk and possibility since i have few knowledge on this area.

Have you any idea on this? Is the chip reliable enough against hack or reverse-engineering？Thank you!

[JohnBrown]

Pretty much all chips can be hacked if you throw enough money at the task. Some will only set you back a few hundred dollars. What you have to ask yourself is this: is your app so clever and complicated that somebody else couldn't easily duplicate the end result without even having to resort to reverse engineering. Most of the time, in my experience, the answer is no. Make it as secure as you can using the protection available would be my advice. If you think somebody is likely to blindly copy your firmware, you might put some odd "easter egg" type thing into the code, so that you could demonstrate the plagiarism.

[joc]

Hey, John, thanks for your answer.