Copy Protection in Modern Microcontrollers (2001)

"MCU break" services start at just under 1k$ and go up to a few k$ USD, the last time I checked. They're mostly based in the Far East (I'm not surprised at the author of this page) and while a lot of people may think "IP theft", they're very useful for right-to-repair, although at the higher end of the price range; if you have some old very expensive machinery to which the original company has long discontinued support or even no longer exists, the price doesn't seem so high anymore.

You shouldn&#x27;t completely rely on the code you put out into the world in devices remaining secret. A sufficiently capable adversary will likely eventually get your data.<p>Whether you&#x27;re talking about a $0.30 MCU with the lock e-fuse programmed, or a several-hundred-dollar (or more) SoC with triple-redundant power-management&#x2F;security cores booting using unit-unique payload decryption keys burned into security fuses, the adversary might be able to get what you&#x27;re trying to protect.<p>How paranoid you want to be about readout protection will vary depending on your goals. If you want to do a decent job blocking reverse engineering of a product to impeded clones being produced, the lock bit might do the trick.