Microcontroller Unlock technology can be hold back by more and more advanced methods, one of modification is using ASIC logic to design the standard block such as decoder, storage file, ALU and I/O circuit.
This design is called GLUE LOGIC which has been widely used in smart card microcontroller unlock. GLUE LOGIC makes it impossible for locating the signals or joint point manually for physical microcontroller unlock.
This technology has been applied on the pirate and increase the performance and security of CPU core. Such as the pinout and program SX28 microcontroller from UBICOM is compatible with PIC16C57 from MICROCHIP.
It use not only GLUE LOGIC design to prevent unlocking, and flash, high capacity RAM makes it is performance increased greatly. In the PIC microcontroller, cracker can easily locate the data bus from flash to CPU and unlock it.
On the contrary, in the SX microcontroller, it is almost impossible to find the data bus, while the reverse engineering and microprobe microcontroller unlock method is very time consuming and expensive.
Microcontroller is constituted by different blocks and each one of them use GLUE LOGIC design. Such as CY7C63001A from CYPRESS microcontroller.
Under this condition, cracker is more readily to follow the data bus and control circuit among the blocks, and unlock the microcontroller with invasive and semi-invasive attack. GLUE LOGIC can’t prevent the un-invasive unlock but need to faster and more expensive facilities.
Semi-invasive microcontroller unlock encounter the fake GLUE LOGIC block issue. However, cracker can operate it automatically and search all the possible area on the microcontroller by using exhausivity to unlock. But the result will normally become invalid. From the other side, cracker can unlock microcontroller storage system or other circuits.