µcode FI

Glitching microcode for fun and no profit. See the paper.

Repo Structure

.
├── docs/          # PDF documents used for development
├── firmware/
│   ├── coreboot/  # Goes on the UP2 board, runs the victim
│   └── picocoder/ # Goes on the Pico, runs the glitcher
├── hardware/
│   ├── pico/      # Pico mod for PMBus message injection
│   └── UPSquared/ # UP2 board mod
└── notebooks/
    ├── imgs/              # Screenshots from previous campaigns
    ├── picocoder_client/  # Lib to connect to the Pico from laptop
    ├── base.ipynb         # Connect to pico/try simple glitches
    ├── plot_from_db.ipynb # Draw glitch campaign plots from db
    └── data_collector.py  # Collect glitch datapoints into a db

Software Setup

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ceres-c/MicroSpark.git
pip install matplotlib pyserial

You'll be asked for a git password when cloning the coreboot submodule. Just press enter and skip those submodules: they're for different hardware.

coreboot

This project requires the target board to run a custom version of coreboot. After cloning the repo with --recurse-submodules, you'll find it in firmware/coreboot/. You can also check it out here.

See firmware/coreboot/README.md for instructions on how to build with red unlock enabled and flash the board.

Hardware Setup

Both the Pico and UP2 board require hardware modifications. You can read more about it in the paper.

Pico

See hardware/pico/README.md

UP2

See hardware/UPSquared/README.md

Power supply

You'll need a Korad KA3005P power supply to power on and reset the UP2 board. If you have another kind of programmable power supply, make changes in notebooks/picocoder_client/power_supply.py.

Usage

Glitch data is acquired through the data_collector.py script in the notebooks/ folder. See notebooks/README.md for instructions.

Plotting is done through notebooks/plot_from_db.ipynb.

Citing

@inproceedings{cerutti_microspark_2026,
	title = {{MicroSpark}: {Testing} {Voltage} {Glitches} on {Intel} {Microcode}},
	url = {Paper=https://download.vusec.net/papers/microspark_uasc26.pdf Code=https://github.com/ceres-c/coreboot},
	booktitle = {{uASC}},
	author = {Cerutti, Federico and de Faveri Tron, Alvise and Giuffrida, Cristiano},
	month = feb,
	year = {2026},
	keywords = {class\_fi, proj\_ictprize, proj\_intersect, proj\_rescale, type\_conf, type\_paper},
}