Another LPC55 ROM Vulnerability

Oxide and Friends · 5 Apr 2022 · 1h 21m · Episode 11

What this episode covers

Laura Abbott, a security engineer at Oxide Computer Company, details the discovery of a second vulnerability in the NXP LPC55S69 microcontroller's ROM, which serves as Oxide's hardware root of trust. She explains how reverse engineering the undocumented ROM using Ghidra revealed a buffer overflow in the signed update parser that allowed extraction of device secrets before the system locked down. The episode covers the initial disclosure process, NXP's eventual receptiveness, and the broader industry challenges regarding transparency, CVEs, and the difficulty of securing general-purpose microcontrollers.

Mentioned

Companies
Oxide Computer Company, NXP, Trusted Computing Group, Signatel, Freescale
Chips
LPC55S69
Tools
Ghidra
Also
DICE, Common Criteria, Hacker News

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