Authentication Flash: Closing the Security Gap Left by Conventional NOR Flash ICs

CS Lin, Marketing Executive, Winbond Electronics Corporation America
EETimes (9/18/2017 00:01 AM EDT)

In response to demand from security-conscious OEMs, the manufacturers of modern microcontrollers and systems-on-chip (SoCs) commonly equip their products with a broad range of security capabilities: standard, off-the-shelf 32-bit MCUs for mainstream, non-financial applications will today often feature a hardware cryptographic accelerator, a random number generator (RNG) and secure memory locations.

But serial Flash memory – the location in which much of an OEM’s precious intellectual property (IP) is stored – has traditionally been more vulnerable than the SoC or microcontroller. Security weaknesses in the companion Flash memory to an MCU or SoC expose OEMs to the commercially damaging risk of product theft due to the cloning of reverse engineered PCB designs. This article explains how Authentication Flash can be uniquely and securely paired to an authorized host controller.

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