Arduino / Atmega in the wild - security?

Thread Starter

bob332

Joined Feb 14, 2011
80
just out of curiosity, how secure is arduino or programmed atmega chips like a atmega 168 or 328 once in the wild? using either the arduino ide, AVRISP mkII or stuff you guys know about that i am not aware of, how easy is it to reconstruct a program?

can it be read and the converted back into assembly? and then from assembly back into something else?

thanks,
bob
 

nerdegutta

Joined Dec 15, 2009
2,684
I don't know about Arduino, but with PIC, when I program/burn the chip, there is an option called "Code protection" or something.

I've tried it, and when I check the box, I cannot read the code back in the programming software. I have to blank/erase all.

BTW I'm using the Piccolo and the Asix UP program.
 

t06afre

Joined May 11, 2009
5,934
No I do not think you can protect code in an arduino. The arduino use a bootloader concept. And I am quite sure that only a programmer unit do have access to the fuse-bits. So anyone with a Atmel programmer unit. Will be able to download your code. In machine code format. I am not an expert on arduino. So I suggest you pay your friend Google a visit. And ask him to seek up the following words arduino protect code
 

Papabravo

Joined Feb 24, 2006
21,159
A determined assault on a microcontroller will probably produce a list of hexadecimal numbers representing the machine code.

With some additional effort a disassembly listing can be produced. Even with a Harvard architecture like the AVR there are still constant tables that need to be accounted for. A disassembly of a constant table does look like gibberish.

Without documentation understanding that assembly listing is difficult, but not impossible. Creating a C program from the assembly language program is probably more work than writing the C program from scratch after understanding and documenting the assembly language version. That is my opinion based on half a century of programming experience. Your mileage may vary.
 

Thread Starter

bob332

Joined Feb 14, 2011
80
thank you all for your information. i do have an avrisp mkII programmer and will see what happens when i try to read the code from the isp pins on an older arduino i have access too. my main concern is the arduino sketch i am working on twitters, so the twitter u/p is in the code and that is what i am worried about.

would i search for 'disassembler'? sorry for my newbness about this situation.

bob
 
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