Seeeduino Crypto Board Combines Microchip ATmega4809 MCU and ECC608 Crypto Chip

With the advance of IoT, security has become critical since devices are often connected to the Internet. There are several ways to improve security and one of them is to implement hardware security via crypto chips.

One of those chips is Microchip ECC608 (aka ATECC608A) secure element which we previously found in Linux based hardware such as USB Armory MK-II USB Linux computer, and the official Arduino Nano 33 IoT Board.

Seeed Studio has now introduced a new Arduino compatible board with Microchip ECC608 crypto chip: Seeeduino Crypto board powered by a Microchip ATmega4809 8-bit AVR MCU.

Seeeduino Crypto specifications:

MCU – Microchip ATMEGA4809-AFR 8-bit AVR microcontroller @ 16 MHz with 48KB flash, 6,144 Bytes RAM
USB – 1x USB Type-C port
Expansion
- Arduino Uno headers with 6x analog inputs, 14x digital I/O pins, 5x PWM
- 2x I2C Grove headers
- 1x UART Grove header
HW Security – Microchip ECC608 secure element with
- Protected storage for up to 16 Keys, certificates or data
- ECDH: FIPS SP800-56A Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman
- NIST standard P256 elliptic curve support
- SHA-256 & HMAC hash including off-chip context save/restore
- AES-128: encrypt/decrypt, Galois field multiply for GCM
Programming – ICSP Interface
Power Supply – 5V USB Type C or 8 -15 V DC Jack Input
Dimensions – ~69 x 54 mm (Arduino UNO R3 form factor)

Seeeduino Crypto is actually derived from Arduino Uno WiFI Rev2 board with also combines ATmega4809 MCU with ECC608 crypto chip and adds WiFi via a Ublox ESP32 module. The company aims was to provide a lower cost alternative to the official Arduino board.

Since the Crypto board does not come with WiFI, Seeed Studio explains ECC608 secure element can be used for encrypted I2C communication for instance, or alternatively you could connect your own WiFi module to the board. There’s no Wiki for the board just yet, but it’s also based on Seeeduino v4.2 which lacks HW security, and whose Wiki can be found here.

Seeeduino Crypto board is available now for $19.99 on Seeed Studio website.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.