Photon-Emission-Guided Laser Fault Injection Enables RP2350 Secure Debug

Sep 18, 2026 · 4:54 PM UTC ·13 min read · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 4 views

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All posts September 18, 2026 Donjon blog Photon-Emission-Guided Laser Fault Injection Enables RP2350 Secure Debug Differential photon-emission microscopy localized debug enable register activity and narrowed the laser search before SWD-guided injection set the two bits required to restore Secure debug on an RP2350 A4. The reset halted the chip before firmware could apply its runtime lock, so the page stayed Secure-readable. — The attack requires physical access, destructive preparation, and approximately $250,000 of laboratory equipment. The RP2350 security model The RP2350 is Raspberry Pi’s dual-core microcontroller: each processor socket can select either an Arm Cortex-M33 or a RISC-V Hazard3 core at boot.

Key facts

▪All posts September 18, 2026 Donjon blog Photon-Emission-Guided Laser Fault Injection Enables RP2350 Secure Debug Differential photon-emission microscopy localized debug enable register activity and narrowed the laser search before SWD-guid
▪The reset halted the chip before firmware could apply its runtime lock, so the page stayed Secure-readable. — The attack requires physical access, destructive preparation, and approximately $250,000 of laboratory equipment.
▪The RP2350 security model The RP2350 is Raspberry Pi’s dual-core microcontroller: each processor socket can select either an Arm Cortex-M33 or a RISC-V Hazard3 core at boot.

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Original publisher	Ledger
Canonical URL	https://donjon.ledger.com/blog/rp2350-secure-debug-laser-fault-injection/
Publication time	Fri, 18 Sep 2026 16:54:18 +0000
Retrieval time	2026-09-18T17:13:48.419Z
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All posts September 18, 2026 Donjon blog Photon-Emission-Guided Laser Fault Injection Enables RP2350 Secure Debug Differential photon-emission microscopy localized debug enable register activity and narrowed the laser search before SWD-guided injection set the two bits required to restore Secure debug on an RP2350 A4. TL;DR — Photon-emission microscopy allowed us to locate a register responsible for the enabling of debug features on the Raspberry Pi microcontroller. — Laser pulses at two nearby positions then restored debugger access to the chip’s Secure world, even though debug had been permanently disabled. — Using that access after a rescue reset, we recovered a secret from one-time-programmable memory.

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