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9 years, 6 months ago.
Alternative bootloader to protect firmware
I need to protect my firmware from copy. I use an mbed LPC1768. I would like to program the LPC1768 and then without having firmware on his local file system. I read about CRP, but I want to keep the possibility of my customer to update the board with a new firmware (eventually I can give him a board to program the mbed LPC1768).
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1 Answer
9 years, 6 months ago.
They really can't do much with just the binary. But afaik you can simply delete it, and it should continue running the old firmware.
They can buy boards from another reseller and then copy the binary file. Our added value is not on hardware, but in firmware. If I delete the file and then reboot LPC1768 it will not work. I think that mbed erase the firmware. Now I'm trying something with digital signature of a key file. It seems impossible that you can not hide the firmware. Not even a minimum of protection.
posted by 18 Jun 2015I checked it, and you are correct. However you need to remember it is primarily a prototyping board, where you don't want such protection. And if you don't want CRP, I don't see many alternatives. If you want you could make each firmware only work on one mbed device, but that is more manual work (it has a unique ID somewhere, so you could in your firmware simply check for your unique ID).
posted by 18 Jun 2015