DailyDirt: Processors Without Borders…?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Now that everyone is a bit more concerned about software backdoors that the NSA might have installed everywhere, a nationalistic push towards “home-grown” hardware could pick up a little among various countries around the world. Designing custom processors and software from scratch isn’t easy or cheap, but it avoids some of the angles of attack for a security break-in (though it doesn’t prevent any of the social engineering tactics). Here are just a few links on processor designs that aren’t coming from Intel or AMD.
- The Russian government is reportedly going to rely on computer processors made by Russian companies, instead of Intel or AMD. Three Russian companies are creating “Baikal” processors, based on ARM designs, but it’s not exactly clear how much more secure the resulting computers will actually be. (ahem, software? ARM licensing?) [url]
- The Chinese supercomputer, Tianhe-2, holds the top spot as the most powerful computer, but it runs on Intel chips, not Loongson processors. China’s Loongson processors might not replace Intel or AMD chips in the top supercomputers in the near future, but it could happen sooner than expected. [url]
- OpenSPARC is an open source processor design available for anyone to develop, but it’s getting a little stale since the last T2 release in 2008. If you’re really paranoid about security, using obscure hardware and software might be make things a bit harder for potential attackers… (did you seriously believe that?) [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: arm, backdoors, baikal processors, loongson, opensparc, processors, security by obscurity, supercomputers, tianhe-2, x86
Companies: amd, intel
Comments on “DailyDirt: Processors Without Borders…?”
They Can?t Hide In The Algorithms
Spooks cannot subvert implementations of the encryption algorithms, because those have to give exactly the same answers as every other implementation, otherwise all the alarm bells will go off.
The one place they can hide a trapdoor is in the random-number generators. This is why we do not trust CPU-provided random-number generation instructions. That?s why, as far as sources of entropy are concerned, the more, the merrier.
Russia
“The Russian government is reportedly going to rely on computer processors made by Russian companies…”
‘Cuz what could go wrong with that?
Re: Russia
And Russian companies are bad because …… ?
I suppose you think made in the US is much better, funny – most everything has been offshored hasn’t it? Even the “Made In US” stickers are made elsewhere.
The pendulum may begin its return swing soon as companies realize offshoring is not the panacea they were promised.
Horshack, Ohhh Ohhhh I Know Mr Cotter
by the way before I say anything else. Welcome Back. I missed that old song, Cha Juk Juk Juk JUk Shum… Cha Juk Juk Juk Juk Juk Juk Juk Juk juk juk juk juk juk juk juk juk Cha JuK Juk JuK JuK Shalong….
into the picking parts
den doo doo deen doo doo dow doo dooo doo Deen doo dodo dow doo doo… nevermind flashback to the old days without the LSD… Welcome back Koter Carter or whever the f it spelled.
I Play that song, learned it off the F-ing TV lol..
(yes tpd plays guitars)
Okay to the meat then?
I think ya literally need to dope your own chips..
I really hate to say that, also ya need to have your own oversight of the doping of those chips..
Furthermore if your going to trust nukes and votes to it… Ya have to change the US CONSTITUTION for the UNITED STATES first
yeah I spelled that uper lower suck my hell.. nonsense, the POINT is more important that playing sovergn man games.
the problem with electricity is it is GLITCHY…
I can say your ttl chip has +3v low +5v high, but what whenits 2v or 9v? What if a Specially Crafted RF signal comes in?
how about I DOPE the chip to run other stuff?
You say no? I laugh at you.
the ONLY evidence I have is there used to be articles about red team blue team and chip manufacture / reverse engineering. this was from the Pentagon, you go look it up.
they literally needed to destructively reverse engineer the chips and still was no guarantee you could find the crap/cruft
It would be a good thing for the market to have more manufacturers out there regardless of the underlying reasoning for it.