Adafruit has this week announced the availability of the ATECC608 breakout board, featuring the latest crypto-auth chip from Microchip. The chip uses I2C to send and receive commands and once you ‘lock’ the chip with your details, you can use it for ECDH and AES-128 encrypt,decrypt and signing. The breakout board also provides hardware support for random number generation, and SHA-256/HMAC hash functions to greatly speed up a slower micro’s cryptography commands. Adafruit explains a little more about the latest component to be made available from their online store.
“We’re starting to see these low-cost secure element chips in various products, so that a less expensive chip can be used to drive peripherals, without worrying about security. This chip does not have a public datasheet, but it is compatible with the ATECC508 earlier version which does, so please refer to that complete datasheet as well as the ATECC608 summary sheet. The good news is that, despite not having complete documentation, there is some software support. For Arduino use, check out the Arduino ATECCx08 library. For Python and C/C++ check out Microchips Cryptoauthlib (yes we also think it’s odd that there’s no datasheet but there is published code)
To make working with the ATECC608 as easy as possible, we’ve put it on a breakout PCB with the required support circuitry and SparkFun qwiic compatible STEMMA QT connectors. This allows you to use it with other similarly equipped boards without needing to solder. This chip will work with 3.3V or 5V power/logic micros, so it’s ready to get to work with a range of development boards.”
The ATECC608 crypto-authentication chip breakout board is now available to purchase from the Adafruit online store priced at just $4.95
Source: Keep your secret safe with the ATECC608 crypto-authentication chip
