And the reason that profit margins need to be high is PRECISELY because the
volumes are low. Most people can't afford to work for free and may need
to take measures to prevent the theft of their intellectual property.
(Been there, have the scars). If you set your price too high, people just
go elsewhere since there are many ways to skin the same cat.

It's not that hard to dissolve away the epoxy covering a chip, and in
the case of PICs to use a focused laser to zap the EEPROM protection
bit. Even though Microchip claims that the bit is hidden under an aluminum
layer, enough heat can be generated locally to erase/overide the bit
(it just takes some time).

If you want a secure part, look at the Atmel devices which scramble the
address and data with XOR keys that are held in volatile RAM. Opening the
chip clears the RAM and it is a difficult exercise to go through all possible
keys to try to recreate the program from the encrypted remnants.

Simple stuff like potting or scraping off numbers adds an hour or two
at most, unless you have your own silicon foundry to make a custom processor
so that any stolen code is useless.

Just look at how the DTH satellite security system has been repeatedly
hacked to realize that no chip is totally secure.

R

Roman Black wrote:
>
> Spehro Pefhany wrote:
> >
> > >Scrubbing numbers (and potting things) is a pathetic, pointless gesture by
> > >manufacturers who don't
> > >understand security. It does not significantly add to the difficulty of
> > >reverse-engineering a
> > >product.
> >
> > I take it as a clear indication that they are small quantity makers and their
> > profit margin is too high.
>
> I'm reluctant to add more negativity to a piclist
> that seems full of it recently, but isn't this
> attitude a bit arrogant?
>
> Are you suggesting that "small quantity makers"
> with high profit margins are failing, or somehow
> inferior to the way *you* choose to do it??
>
> Business empires have been built on small quantity
> products with high profit margins, look at
> Lamborghini etc.
> -Roman

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