EM78P447SAM: what is this? anyone has ever used it?

[legacy]

so ... some QA-guys have become so paranoid that they want to see a piece of paper with the label "military-grade" written next to KVM switch, otherwise, they won't authorize the use of anything, and "Military-grade" KVM switches are so damn expensive that my colleagues have asked me to reverse engineering them in order to understand which is the difference with a "common" KVM-switch and such a "safe" gear.

We are also in idle due to a couple of technical problems with our airplanes, something that is out of our competence (mechanical problems), so I have a couple of days to play with KVM-switches.

I have already opened and inspected a couple of DLINK models, finding the EM78P447SAM chip, which looks a protected microcontroller, unable to be "hacked"provide a key-logger.

[SiliconWizard]

You can find more info here: http://www.emc.com.tw/eng/8bit_prod_dsc.asp?gid=&tid=000007&tt=8bit_gpio_ds&nn=GPIO+Type+MCU+Family

[legacy]

yes, but ... which is the ISA? I haven't yet understood if it's a 51-clone, or something different ...

[Kalvin]

so ... some QA-guys have become so paranoid that they want to see a piece of paper with the label "military-grade" written next to KVM switch, otherwise, they won't authorize the use of anything, and "Military-grade" KVM switches are so damn expensive that my colleagues have asked me to reverse engineering them in order to understand which is the difference with a "common" KVM-switch and such a "safe" gear.

I guess you could get that paper from China quite fast and easily

[SiliconWizard]

yes, but ... which is the ISA? I haven't yet understood if it's a 51-clone, or something different ...

Take a look at §4.10 of the datasheet. It has a very simple instruction set.

[jhpadjustable]

Slightly modified PIC clone...

[SiliconWizard]

Slightly modified PIC clone...

Didn't recognize the PIC IS from a quick look at the DS, but I thought it was looking familiar...

[jhpadjustable]

Didn't recognize the PIC IS from a quick look at the DS, but I thought it was looking familiar...

1. "Okay, who the hell uses a 13 bit instruction word?"
2. "... Google?"
3. 
Did I cheat, or is library science really a full one-third of our art?

[legacy]

So, the KVM switch with the EM78P447SAM "weird CPU" has been classified as "unsafe" even if nobody on the planet Earth (except someone really crazy) would like to hack it,

but those guys in the QA office said to me that a "Military-Grade" KVM Switch *must be* Hacker-Proof not because you cannot find the datasheet/SDK/whatever regarding the chip, or because you find that the MPU is so a pain in the ass to be hacked and reprogrammed that you would really prefer desoldering and replacing the chip with something more friendly (Teensy 4.0? it was the first thing I thought, anyway) ...

but rather *because* each of these "super safe" products *must* offer - hardware-based data isolation and protective measures against port-to-port data leakage -  (their words), further reducing the risk of unauthorized access ... and, beside the data security, they want to read a signed legal piece of paper where it's written black on white that the secure KVM Switch with USB unit *must* also sport several fail-safe physical security features, tested and proved to be 100% working in each scenario, including  tamper-evident tape (wtf?!?) on the casing that reveals a broken seal, as well as "automatic disabling of the unit" (disable channels and halt) in the event of a breach in the physical casing.

O_M_G