dump of protected memory

[energy]

Hi,

We found out on this topic that there was a flaw memory protection of nrf51xxx chip devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

We search on the net and found out quickly how to dump the memory ! That's crazy Is this problem still in last revision nRF51822 chips ?

We don't need protection against reflashing but against dumping our code. We're thinking of stopping our production launch because of this problem. We can't affort cheap HW copy of our product with our software on them ...

Is the nRF52 better protected or also have such dramatic flaw ?

thanks

[Roger Clark]

@energy

I can confirm that all of the nRF51822 devices that I have tested, have the flaw that allows the code to be dumped. Its actually very easy and can be done using $3 hardware, using the GCC toolchain.

I have not tested with the nRF52 but my understanding was that this flaw had been corrected.

I think there may be a reply to a similar question about 6 months or 1 year ago with Nordic's official response.

I must admit, I was hoping that this flaw would be fixed in the latest revision of the nRF51822 e.g. the QFACH1, but from what I recall, when I tested that version (a while ago), it still appeared to have the flaw.

I presume that the flaw is difficult to fix in the silicon, otherwise Nordic would have fixed it in their more recent versions.

In the mean time, we just code knowing that our product could be reverse engineered.