September 2024
Intermediate to advanced
408 pages
7h 29m
English
McCormac (1996) and other Nineties sources describe a vulnerability for dumping Intel’s 8051. This chip has an !EA pin that maps external memory into the boot region.
The pin is not latched by sampling it only at reset; you can flip it back and forth as the software is running! The chip’s memory can be dumped by booting to an external EEPROM that jumps from the boot region to the EEPROM region and then re-enables the ROM to be read as data.
Some 8051 derivatives such as the Signetics SCN8051H remain vulnerable. Others latch the !EA pin at reset to prevent the attack.
Blair (2020) is a standalone dumper for 8051 chips with this unlatched pin, including both a PCB design and an EEPROM image to perform ...
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