How can I protect my chip from hex file copy?

RE: How can I protect my chip from hex file copy?

Ole Morten — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:03:52 GMT

I expanded my answer above with further information on how to set RBP. Take a look, and please accept the answer if you find it satisfactory.

RE: How can I protect my chip from hex file copy?

gootoomoon — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:51:17 GMT

Can I write or check UICR with my own code in region1 by control NVMC ？ I don‘t know wether other programmer own this func or not . I can' not burn my chip one by one with nRFgo studio. May be I should make my own programmer for nrf51822?

RE: How can I protect my chip from hex file copy?

Ole Morten — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 10:16:23 GMT

If you want to avoid anyone being able to read out your firmware over the SWD interface, you have to enable readback protection. This can be done with nRFgo Studio, or any other programmer, as it's really just setting a UICR register to a specific value. See the definition of the RBPCONF register in the nRF51 Reference Manual.

There is no way you can use the AES module to encrypt your code or anything similar.

Edit: You can set RBP in multiple ways:

Make code in your main application to enable flash writes, do the write and then disable flash writes.
Include the value in your build, like done in the uicr_example in the SDK. This will cause RBP to be set during regular programming of the hex.
Use a programmer to specifically set this register. This can be done with nrfjprog using the --rbp command line parameter, and most likely in similar ways with other programmers.

For further tips on production programming, take a look at this question.

RE: How can I protect my chip from hex file copy?

gootoomoon — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 21:45:56 GMT

Or make every hex different and can only run normal just at the right chip?