.Issues with the RP2040

Code security and RAM security

Typically a microcontroller allows the code it runs to be protected against reading and has programming time options to disable debugging. The RP2040 doesn’t have this, it is unable to protect the code it runs or its RAM.

The MCU can execute code either from RAM or directly from flash. You might think you could encrypt the flash and implement a decryptor in software that decrypts the flash into RAM before executing that code. BUT, the RP2040 has no internal memory for the secret key to decrypt it with (so you need to have that key outside of the MCU, unencrypted – pointless) and also the RP2040 can’t be locked down against debuggers, so you can always read the RAM.

For many commercial and security use cases, this makes using the RP2040 in a design a non-starter. Such a shame.

USEFUL?
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