Chip Reverse Engineering

From Tmplab
Revision as of 13:34, 8 July 2008 by Phil (talk | contribs) (Microscope)

Microscope

Thanks to Karsten Nohl presentation at Hacker Space Fest, there's an interesting DIY approach for reverse engineering.

Features

These are the features we're looking for:

  • 500x magnification
  • 2 MP to 8 MP camera
  • Objective table to move the chip slowly (i.e. not by hand, too much shaking and imprecision)
  • Reflected (incident) lighting

Feature we DON'T NEED:

  • Confocal microscope (it seems, because we'll abrase/grind away the upper layers anyway and the bottom layers are opaque anyway too)

Leads

Links

Microscope tests

Perfect Microscope

Still selecting the right model.

Poor man microscope setup

  • Objective table: micro-screws controlled moving plate
  • Microscope: 640x optical Bresser (lent by Phil's friend).
  • Camera: 3.2 MP Canon Ixus V3
    • Mounting: Attached directly to the eye-piece
    • Drawback: produces round (not square) pictures (with no noticeable deformation) of smaller size/coverage than regular microscope-camera.
    • Advantage: working and free

Substrate

  • What kind of glue to use to attach the chip to solid/manoeuvrable support?

Software