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There's two reasons I've seen companies obfuscate as much of their hardware and firmware as possible: 1. Protecting their trade secrets. Even if it's eventuall

There's two reasons I've seen companies obfuscate as much of their hardware and firmware as possible: 1. Protecting their trade secrets. Even if it's eventually leaked or copied, the time between introducing the product and a clone happening might represent billions in sales. 2. Reducing patent damages. Hardware is a patent minefield with suits and licensing deals pretty common. The companies that want to troll need to see clearly that their patents were infringed. Making the product as opaque as possible reduces the number that will notice in the first place and/or how certain their claim will look. Patent suits are the single, greatest threat to open-source, hardware companies that operate in an existing ecosystem.

ratmice 8y ago
IANAL, but I find 2. weird, my first thought was that it obfuscation would give the opposing litigant an argument for willfulness potentially increasing patent damages. i.e. it may reduce the total sum of patent damages across all potential cases by reducing the number that result in litigation, while increasing likelihood of increased damages for an unsuccessful defense. Can't help but think 2. really seems to me a double edged sword.
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  Well, I know they do No 2 and it seems to work a bit. My guess is they never bring up that motivation. Just say they hid their design to stop Chinese copycats and delay hackers.
codedokode 8y ago
Why copy the code that can run only on Intel CPUs? It doesn't make sense.
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  They mostly try to protect hardware implementation details. Another example was how hard it is to get data needed for writing good drivers, another firmware. Even that most companies don't want to share for fear it leaks some aspect of the design. Finally, for Intel ME backdooring all CPU's, there's a decent chance they're paid a fortune by one partner in particular to keep it there with buggy, obfuscated code. That's on top of ordinary reasons.

ratmice 8y ago

IANAL, but I find 2. weird, my first thought was that it obfuscation would give the opposing litigant an argument for willfulness potentially increasing patent damages. i.e. it may reduce the total sum of patent damages across all potential cases by reducing the number that result in litigation, while increasing likelihood of increased damages for an unsuccessful defense. Can't help but think 2. really seems to me a double edged sword.

nickpsecurity 8y ago
Well, I know they do No 2 and it seems to work a bit. My guess is they never bring up that motivation. Just say they hid their design to stop Chinese copycats and delay hackers.

codedokode 8y ago

Why copy the code that can run only on Intel CPUs? It doesn't make sense.

nickpsecurity 8y ago
They mostly try to protect hardware implementation details. Another example was how hard it is to get data needed for writing good drivers, another firmware. Even that most companies don't want to share for fear it leaks some aspect of the design. Finally, for Intel ME backdooring all CPU's, there's a decent chance they're paid a fortune by one partner in particular to keep it there with buggy, obfuscated code. That's on top of ordinary reasons.