Cypress Microcontroller Attack

About Cypress Semiconductor

California-based Cypress Semiconductor has evolved into a global operation providing technology solutions for the Internet of Things. Its products are in smart devices of all types, from smart watches to cars to connected appliances. As a fast-growing, fast-moving company, Cypress had a developed complex hybrid IT environment that was expensive, inefficient, and came with increasingly complex security concerns. Given those concerns, the company had to harden its entire infrastructure against every kind of network attack.

Cypress delivers high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable solutions that provide customers with rapid time-to-market and exceptional system value. Cypress offerings include the flagship PSoC programmable system-on-chip families and derivatives such as PowerPSoC solutions for high-voltage and LED lighting applications, CapSense touch sensing and TrueTouch solutions for touchscreens. Cypress is the world leader in USB controllers, including the high-performance West Bridge solution that enhances connectivity and performance in multimedia handsets. Cypress is also a leader in high-performance memories and programmable timing devices.

Cypress offerings include the PSoC Programmable System-on-Chip, USB controllers, general-purpose programmable clocks and memories. Cypress also offers wired and wireless connectivity solutions ranging from its WirelessUSB radio system-on-chip, to West Bridge and EZ-USB FX2LP controllers that enhance connectivity and performance in multimedia handsets. Cypress serves numerous markets including consumer, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial, and solar power. Cypress trades on the NYSE under the ticker symbol CY.

Cypress Semiconductor PSoC 6 Microcontroller (MCU) is an ultralow-power, high-performance PSoC MCU with critical security features for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The PSoC 6 is based on an ultra-low-power 40nm process technology and provides a dual-core ARM Cortex-M architecture. The MCU also provides the capacitive sensing solution, CapSense, software-defined analog and digital peripherals, programmable analog-front-end (AFE) functions, and multiple connectivity options.

PSoC 6 provides a secure solution for IoT development and supports multiple, simultaneous secure environments without the need for external memories or SoCs. The PSoC 6 provides integrated hardware and software security features for IoT systems that require protection against cyber threats and hacking. The hardware-enforced isolation is specifically designed to defeat common attempts to hack into IoT firmware.

The PSoC 6 incorporate flexibility and new features to address market trends without the need for hardware changes. Enable next generation IoT application development in a timely and reliable manner using the intuitive PSoC Creator IDE and vast ecosystem partners.

Cypress delivers high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable solutions that provide customers with rapid time-to-market. Cypress offerings include programmable system-on-chip families and FM microcontrollers based on Arm Cortex-M, as well as 8051-based processors.

PSoC 32-bit Arm Core MCUs – PSoC is a programmable embedded System-on-Chip integrating an MCU core, high-performance Programmable Analog Blocks, PLD-based Programmable Digital Blocks, Programmable Interconnect and Routing, and CapSense. All new PSoC devices feature the industry standard Arm Cortex-M MCU cores. The very flexibility of those programmable blocks means that reverse engineering of a finished PSoC design is far from trivial.

The Cypress PSoC Creator is a complete package to design a customer specific chip, initialize it and write all the firmware for PSoC devices. Cypress has extended the capabilities of the PSoC Creator to export projects to MDK Version 5. This export path lets designers unlock more advanced debugging and code-analysis workflows inside the MDK environment.

FM 32-bit Arm Core MCUs – The FM microcontroller family, which is based on the Arm Cortex-M4, M3, and M0+ CPUs, is a scalable platform for many industrial applications. Customers can select the most appropriate device from a range of products, coming in packages from 32 to 216 pins, with Flash memory densities between 56KB and 2MB. For field support and legacy maintenance, firmware extraction from FM devices is normally performed through the standard SWD debug port.

FM0+ Family – based on the Arm Cortex-M0+ core, designed for industrial and cost-sensitive applications with low power requirements such as white goods, sensors, meters, Human Machine Interface (HMI) systems and power tools.

FM3 Family – 32-bit general-purpose MCUs based on the Arm Cortex-M3 CPU, providing a scalable platform for many consumer and industrial applications.

FM4 Family – 32-bit general-purpose MCUs based on the Arm Cortex-M4F processor core, featuring DSP and Floating Point Unit (FPU) functions, covering the highest end of the product range.

The CY7C68013A-128AXC is a USB Microcontroller Unit ideal for non-battery-powered applications. The 8051 microprocessor embedded in the FX2LP family has 256bytes of register RAM, an expanded interrupt system, three timer/counters and two USARTs. It has separate data buffers for the setup and data portions of a CONTROL transfer. During bring-up, a quick memory dump of the FX2LP's internal RAM is often the fastest way to confirm that the downloaded firmware is executing correctly.

The Cypress CY7C68013 is a USB microcontroller. It can do USB 2.0 high speed and contains an enhanced 8051 microcontroller core. According to the Cypress website, the CY7C68013 should no longer be used for new designs. The CY7C68013A is compatible, but uses less power and has more on-chip RAM.

SDCC is a free C compiler targeting, among others, the Intel 8051, so it can be used to generate code for the CY7C68013A. It comes with an assembler and linker. A Ubuntu package is also available. Because SDCC is open source, there is no licensing scheme to crack, and the toolchain can be freely adapted for custom projects.