Building a Logic Analyzer for SD Cards

SD cards are a black box tat contains a large block of “dumb” flash memory along with a small microprocessor to manage that memory and present it to the SD interface. We would like to open up this black box to peek inside the inner workings of an SD card in order to ensure that the card’s firmware contains no malicious code or secret commands that can be used to recover removed data. This talk goes into detail about the hardware jig we’ve created to begin to analyze this data, including board design, Verilog FPGA code, and Linux userspace code. It will not detail the results, as we have not yet analyzed the data.

Xobs

Worked for chumby Industries and did the firmware for the chumby One and Infocast 8, and then moved to Singapore to work with Bunnie on the NeTV. Have been living in Singapore the last two and a half years, coming up with new board designs, learning more about computer architecture, hardware design, and supply chain management, and generally enjoying life. No formal background in technology other than extensive playing around with technology and seat-of-the-pants on-the-job just-in-time on-demand training.