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I've often wondered -- and perhaps you don't know the answer, or there is no one typical answer -- but, do these companies in Russia, China, etc., that one pays

I've often wondered -- and perhaps you don't know the answer, or there is no one typical answer -- but, do these companies in Russia, China, etc., that one pays to break the chip, promise to not re-sell the extracted chip contents? (Or maybe we should just remember the saying "no honor amongst thieves") I think the last time I looked into a service like this, they required that you send them multiple targets to attack because normally the attack is invasive / destructive, and they might need to "burn through a few" before they succeed. If you have any experience in this area, do you know if that still holds true? Thanks. Sorry to punish your useful answer with more questions.

userbinator 6y ago
but, do these companies in Russia, China, etc., that one pays to break the chip, promise to not re-sell the extracted chip contents? I don't know --- I imagine a lot of the time they wouldn't even know what equipment the chip came out of, and/or it's something extremely obscure, so it would be very hard to sell the contents. I think the last time I looked into a service like this, they required that you send them multiple targets to attack because normally the attack is invasive / destructive, and they might need to "burn through a few" before they succeed. If you have any experience in this area, do you know if that still holds true? If it's a new MCU they've not done before, they might ask for that --- to find where the protection fuses are. It doesn't have to be the actual one you want, just an example of a protected one along with the code it contains in order to "check their answers". That will cost quite a lot more than known-extractions, however.