Patent ID: 8751869

Claim:
A microprogrammable electronic device comprising a code memory storing a code comprising a number of instructions, the microprogrammable electronic device being configured to at least: operate according to instruction cycles, each instruction cycle divided into a respective first and a respective second operating phase; read a first instruction from the code memory at the first operating phase of an instruction cycle; decode and execute the read first instruction at the second operating phase of the instruction cycle; the microprogrammable electronic device comprising a signature computation unit that is configured to at least: read a second instruction from the code memory at the second operating phase of the instruction cycle concurrently with the microprogrammable electronic device decoding and executing the first read instruction, the second operating phase having a length equal to a length of the first operating phase; compute a signature of the code on the basis of the read second instruction; and detect a corruption of the code stored in the code memory on the basis of the computed signature differing from a reference signature.