CC3100/CC3200 NWP Security Updates

Hi Billy,

I cannot speak for TI and their plans, but you could always update your application, making sure that it using the soft libraries and not the ROM for the buggy calls. This will just require a boot-loader of some sort, which should be relatively painless, since we are told that OTA (Over The Air) updates will be possible. The only disadvantages is that it will make the application slightly larger, so make sure you have the space available.

Glenn.

Glenn Vassallo said:

I cannot speak for TI and their plans, but you could always update your application, making sure that it using the soft libraries and not the ROM for the buggy calls.

This is something I've considered, and I think it should be possible to work around most potential security problems through the application like this but its certainly an imperfect solution.

I would think that TI would have some sort of a plan in place so that users could avoid having to re-implement NWP functionality in their application code if a major bug is found. Specifically, after reading through more of the CC3200 documentation, I am wondering if perhaps some, if not all, security updates are able to be applied using a "service pack" update (assuming it is possible to apply these updates OTA). My understanding is that a service pack update is not equivalent to a ROM firmware update although perhaps I'm wrong as I must admit that I really don't understand exactly what the service pack is.

Billy,

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that your have the NWP drivers which have been burnt into ROM, and as the name suggests, this is read only and cannot be updated. The firmware updates however do update these drivers, so I imagine this ROM will also be updated over time, the later the chip the later the version of the firmware burnt into ROM. I also believe that if you format your serial flash, then you application will default to using the ROM drivers instead of the ones on the service pack. 

You also have peripheral drivers in ROM (in the MCU part of the CC3200), and I know you can reference to use these instead of the libraries by using the MAP_ or is it ROM_ prefix....not sure if the NWP drivers have this capability,

Perhaps someone from TI can fill in the gaps.

Glenn.

Glen,

Thanks for the reply! If you are indeed correct that the service pack updates replace the NWP ROM drivers then it seems that it will be possible to update buggy ROM code.

I would certainly appreciate if someone from TI could confirm that the service pack works like this and, if it does, that any code in the  NWP ROM can be patched in this way.

Thanks!