Stacksmashing Turns the Raspberry Pi Pico, Other RP2040s, Into an SPI Flash Blower via Flashrom
A modified version of flashrom now lets you turn your Raspberry Pi Pico, or other RP2040-based board, into an SPI flash ROM dumper/blower.
Pseudonymous security researcher stacksmashing has found a new use for the low-cost Raspberry Pi Pico development board: Turning it into a write-capable SPI flash ROM dumper and blower.
Released earlier this year, the RP2040-powered Raspberry Pi Pico may have been built with more traditional microcontroller projects in mind but boasts the capabilities to do considerably more — everything from tinyML edge AI work to software-defined radio, vintage computer emulation, and even gaming. Now, there's a new function to add to the list: SPI flash ROM tool.
"I just added support for the Raspberry Pi Pico to flashrom," stacksmashing announced to Twitter this weekend, "turning it into a nice & cheap SPI flash dumper." To prove the concept, a screenshot showed the open-source software tool communicating with a WInbond W25Q80.V 1MB SPI flash chip via a Raspberry Pi Pico — though the same software should work with any other RP2040-based board, too.
As well as being able to dump the contents of ROM chips, stacksmashing has confirmed that flashrom can be used to blow content into a blank chip — or wipe a chip to store new content.
The modified code has not yet been submitted to the flashrom GitHub repository, where the original source code is available under the GNU General Public License 2.0; more information is available on the stacksmashing Twitter feed.