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

Researchers used photon-emission microscopy and laser fault injection to bypass security features on the Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller, enabling debug access to its Secure world and recovering secrets from one-time-programmable memory. The attack exploited a timing window during chip reset before firmware could apply runtime security locks, though it required physical access and approximately $250,000 in specialized laboratory equipment. The findings were part of Raspberry Pi's official hacking challenge program to evaluate the chip's security protections.