AES Encryption

[Ian Barnes]

Hi everyone,

Just a quick question, have any thoughts been given to xboot
supporting encryption of the update firmware image? Some of the newer
XMEGA devices have an AES hardware block that will make things a bit
easier, and should not affect programming speed.

Kind regards,
Ian.

[Ian Barnes]

Anyone?

[Alex Forencich]

Very little thought has been given to this so far. I suppose it would
not be too difficult to decrypt pages as they are being written. Do you
have a specific application in mind? Also, xboot does support an API
mode so a user application can update itself online or when the
interface to obtain a new firmware image is more complicated than can
fit in a 4k boot section. Using the API, xboot can be used to install a
firmware image downloaded over the internet or read off of a filesystem
on a flash drive of some sort.

Alex Forencich

[Ian Barnes]

Hi Alex,

It's more for protecting distributed firmware upgrades from disassembly. I'll look into going further with this once I have xboot working correctly.

Kind regards,

Ian.

[Trevor White]

Did anything come from this thread? I am interested to work with encrypted firmware files.