Atmel Launches Industry's First EEPROM Device with AES-CCM Authentication

Atmel announced an extension to the Atmel CryptoAuthentication family, the ATAES132 devices. These new devices offer secure data storage using the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) authentication for industrial, consumer, computing and embedded applications with flexible key management features and secure counters. AES is a symmetric-key encryption standard adopted by governments and cryptographic experts around the world.

These security features are available in two devices compatible with standard serial EEPROMs, one supporting I2C and the other supporting SPI. This allows system developers to add security to existing systems without retooling their printed circuit board. This direct replacement can extend the life of a system's architecture by including security features within the hardware to make the system more secure than software implementations. The new secure devices also extend a current system's security into the future with the AES-CCM (AES in Counter and Cipher block chaining modes with message authentication code) authentication.

There is a current void in the consumer, medical and computing sectors for increased security in microcontroller-based applications, said Kerry Maletsky, cryptographic product line director, Atmel Corporation. Atmel helps fill this void by enabling developers to simply replace their serial EEPROM with the new ATAES132. These devices offer world-class hardware protection for keys and data to help system developers easily integrate a higher level of trust in their system. Features like non-reversible monotonic counters and the ability to securely move keys on and off the chip provide a level of system flexibility not previously available.

The Atmel ATAES132 development kits can be plugged into a variety of Atmel AVR® or ARM®-based development kit for a complete project solution. All Atmel ATAES132 devices support 2.5V to 5.5V supply voltages and consume less than 250nA standby/sleep current.