Authenticators for medical device protection enable engineers to add extra protection to applications

Mouser now stocks the DS28E39 and DS28E84 DeepCover authenticators from Maxim Integrated. These secure authenticators allow engineers to add an additional layer of protection to applications such as IoT nodes, secure peripherals, device management, and medical sensors.

The authenticators assist design engineers in safeguarding medical devices against invasive attacks. The devices offered a core set of cryptographic tools derived from integrated blocks, comprising an asymmetric ECC-P256 hardware engine (plus a symmetric SHA-256 compute engine in the DS28E84), a FIPS-compliant (FIPS/NIST-compliant for the DS28E39) true random number generator, and a decrement-only counter. The devices also incorporate onboard nonvolatile memory (2Kbits of secured EEPROM on the DS28E39, and 15Kbits of FRAM on the DS28E84) and provide a unique 64-bit ROM identification number, which is utilised as a fundamental input parameter for cryptographic operations and assists as an electronic serial number inside the application.

Both devices communicate over the single-contact 1-Wire bus at both standard and overdrive speeds, providing for simple integration into designs. The communication conforms to the 1-Wire protocol with the ROM ID acting as node address in the case of a multi-device 1-Wire network.