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I find it extremely hard to believe that China is inserting magic backdoor chips into all of our computer hardware. What's much more likely is that they were ab

I find it extremely hard to believe that China is inserting magic backdoor chips into all of our computer hardware. What's much more likely is that they were able to bribe or threaten some engineers into giving information away. That's been a common tactic since spying became a thing.

bilbo0s 8y ago
Doesn't even have to be an engineer. You gather intelligence wherever you can. The Chinese are at least as smart as I am, and for me, the guy who runs the xerox machine or cleans the office will do nicely, thank you very much. I don't need some high powered engineer. So I'm almost positive they don't either. It seems like putting magical chips into computers is one of the most difficult methods of acquiring what at the root would be the same intelligence.
wpdev_63 8y ago
This[0] is a backdoor that was discovered _only_ through reading patents on the chip. It gave the highest possible privilege(ring -4) to the user by simply running an undocumented cpu register. It would be incredibly easy to hide something like this within one of the 100 of thousands of computers that go to the big 4 or even the pentagon. I'd imagine people at the pentagon select randomly from a number of computers coming in and do some chip analysis like this[1] but I can only speculate and they probably can't stop all the hardware backdoors this way. Anybody that would be caught disclosing highly classified information would probably be found and promptly hanged(or get in some sort of freak car accident). They probably have some serious counterintelligence to catch the leaks. Once again I am only speculating. [0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSAF_qT_FY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSAF_qT_FY [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4aF-qiziM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4aF-qiziM
- makomk 8y ago
  The existence of the Via C3 "backdoor" was actually documented in the official datasheet, along with the correct MSR bit to enable/disable it. See page A-10 in appendix A: http://datasheets.chipdb.org/VIA/Nehemiah/VIA%20C3%20Nehemiah%20Datasheet%20R113.pdf http://datasheets.chipdb.org/VIA/Nehemiah/VIA%20C3%20Nehemia... Apparently the researchers either couldn't find a copy or didn't notice that part.

bilbo0s 8y ago

Doesn't even have to be an engineer. You gather intelligence wherever you can. The Chinese are at least as smart as I am, and for me, the guy who runs the xerox machine or cleans the office will do nicely, thank you very much. I don't need some high powered engineer. So I'm almost positive they don't either. It seems like putting magical chips into computers is one of the most difficult methods of acquiring what at the root would be the same intelligence.

wpdev_63 8y ago

This[0] is a backdoor that was discovered _only_ through reading patents on the chip. It gave the highest possible privilege(ring -4) to the user by simply running an undocumented cpu register. It would be incredibly easy to hide something like this within one of the 100 of thousands of computers that go to the big 4 or even the pentagon. I'd imagine people at the pentagon select randomly from a number of computers coming in and do some chip analysis like this[1] but I can only speculate and they probably can't stop all the hardware backdoors this way. Anybody that would be caught disclosing highly classified information would probably be found and promptly hanged(or get in some sort of freak car accident). They probably have some serious counterintelligence to catch the leaks. Once again I am only speculating. [0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSAF_qT_FY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSAF_qT_FY [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4aF-qiziM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4aF-qiziM

makomk 8y ago
The existence of the Via C3 "backdoor" was actually documented in the official datasheet, along with the correct MSR bit to enable/disable it. See page A-10 in appendix A: http://datasheets.chipdb.org/VIA/Nehemiah/VIA%20C3%20Nehemiah%20Datasheet%20R113.pdf http://datasheets.chipdb.org/VIA/Nehemiah/VIA%20C3%20Nehemia... Apparently the researchers either couldn't find a copy or didn't notice that part.