PCB News - Analysis and explanation of PCB copy board and chip decryption

Analysis and explanation of PCB copy board and chip decryption

What is PCB copy board? It is a reverse research technology to obtain PCB design circuits, BOM tables, and circuit schematic diagrams of electronic products. While learning and drawing lessons from existing electronic product design ideas, it is also the research and development and innovation of new technologies. .

PCB copy board, the industry is often referred to as circuit board copy board, circuit board clone, circuit board copy, PCB clone, PCB reverse design or PCB reverse research and development. Regarding the definition of PCB copy board, there are many opinions in the industry and academia., But they are not complete. If you want to give an accurate definition of PCB copy board, you can learn from the authoritative PCB copy board laboratory in China: PCB copy board, that is, on the premise that there are physical objects of electronic products and circuit boards., Use reverse research and development technology to reversely analyze the circuit board, and restore the original product's PCB files, bill of materials (BOM) files, schematic files and other technical files and PCB silk screen production files at 1:1, and then reuse These technical documents and production documents are used for PCB manufacturing, component welding, flying probe testing, circuit board debugging, and complete copying of the original circuit board template. Since electronic products are composed of various types of circuit boards, the core control part performs work. Therefore, the use of a process of PCB copying can complete the extraction of a full set of technical data of any electronic product and the imitation and cloning of products.

Many people don't know what PCB copy board is. Some people even think that PCB copy board is a copycat. Shanzhai means imitation in everyone’s understanding, but PCB copy board is definitely not imitation. The purpose of PCB copy board is to learn the latest foreign electronic circuit design technology, and then absorb excellent design solutions, and then use it to develop better designs. The product.

PCB copy board is a kind of reverse research technology, which is to obtain the PCB design circuit of an excellent electronic product through a series of reverse research technology, as well as circuit schematic diagram and BOM table. Through this reverse research method, it takes two or three years for others to develop a product. Through the reverse research of PCB copy board, it may only take one month to learn the results developed by others in two or three years. This has played a very important role in promoting our developing countries to catch up with the world. Moreover, the development of reverse research technology has also played a role in promoting the technological breakthroughs of those development teams. The vigorous development of reverse research technology has also led to the continuous update of forward research technology. Because of this competitive relationship between forward research and reverse research, the development of electronic technology in recent years has been able to change with each passing day. Electronic products are updated almost once a year, and the speed of subsequent electronic product updates will only increase. quick. Because PCB copy board lowers the threshold of electronic technology. PCB copy board has enabled more and more developing countries to quickly step onto the forefront of high-tech electronic technology, and research electronic technology together with developed countries. The larger the research team, the more advanced the world's electronic technology can be.

Literally, PCB copy board is the reverse research of circuit board, and chip decryption is the reverse research of chip. It seems that there is not much difference, but in fact, the two are inseparable from each other. The PCBA board is the carrier of the chip, and the second chip is its core component. There is only one "board" for the PCB copy board without a chip.

What is chip decryption? It is a kind of emerging reverse engineering. With the help of special equipment or self-made equipment, single-chip attackers can use the vulnerabilities or software defects in the single-chip chip design to extract key information from the chip and obtain the programs in the single-chip computer through a variety of technical methods. ; In other words, it refers to the technology and structural principles used to research chips and crack the chips.

Chip decryption refers to copying the stored code from the encrypted chip. There are many types of chips embedded with program codes, and MCU is just one of them. Microcontrollers (MCUs) generally have internal EEPROM/FLASH for users to store programs and working data. In order to prevent unauthorized access or copying of the internal program of the MCU, most MCUs are equipped with an encryption lock bit or encrypted byte to protect the on-chip program. If the encryption lock bit is enabled (locked) during programming, the program in the single-chip microcomputer cannot be directly read with an ordinary programmer. This is called single-chip encryption or chip encryption. With the help of special equipment or self-made equipment, a single-chip microcomputer attacker can use a variety of technical methods to extract key information from the chip and obtain the program in the single-chip microcomputer. This is called chip decryption.

Chip decryption is also called MCU decryption, MCU cracking, chip cracking, and IC decryption, but these titles are not scientific strictly speaking, but they have become customary names. We call CPLD decryption and DSP decryption as chip decryption. . The single chip microcomputer is only one of the classes that can load the program chip. There are DSP, CPLD, PLD, AVR, ARM, etc. chips that can burn programs and can encrypt. There are also chips specially designed with encryption algorithms for professional encryption or functional chips such as designing and verifying factory code work. Such chips can also achieve the purpose of preventing electronic products from being copied.