NAND Flash Open Research Platform
From iis-projects
Contents
Short Description
SSDs today are ubiquitous. However, they are usually often closed source and because of it assessing their security is not an easy task. In particular, it most often requires reverse engineering their firmware, which is as complex as a small OS on modern SSDs. While getting the firmware is not trivial, even when the SSD's firmware image can be obtained, it is still not easy to observe the I/O behavior of the NAND flash. While communication with the host is easily observable, communication between the SSD controller and the NAND Flash chips requires tapping into the PCB bus on already assembled SSDs. While nowadays there exist some commercial boards able to analyze the error characteristics of flash chips directly, they are costly and difficult to customize. We want to build an open platform that allows to directly interface to NAND flash ICs to study their behavior and argue about their security.
Status: Available
- Looking for 1-2 Semester/Master students
- Contact: Moritz Schneider, Ivan Puddu
Prerequisites
- VLSI I
Character
- 20% Theory
- 40% PCB Design
- 40% Firmware
Professor
Detailed Task Description
In this project, we want to investigate the behavior of the NAND flash chips. You would design a custom, open source, and programmable board able to interface with raw NAND flash chips. In particular, read, write and re-program them directly. This project would involve designing a PCB daughterboard that can be connected to an FPGA or microcontroller.