5 ms·
What motivates a person to give a talk like this at Blackhat? A method to compromise cpus by feeding them secret instructions seems like trouble the world doesn
by beautifulfreak 8y ago
What motivates a person to give a talk like this at Blackhat? A method to compromise cpus by feeding them secret instructions seems like trouble the world doesn't need. Sure, he's only focused on an outdated system, but he's shown how to do it, and even gives away the tool. Is it like making smallpox virus available, so it can be studied? But how can hardware designers make any system safe from such tenacious probing? Imagine how different the world would be if there was no threat of exploitation.
- sprayk 8y agoit is sort of assumed that such back doors already exist, but only the big players (NSA, et al) have access. This (and talks like this in general) aren't to let others know about this so they can own people, it's to empower the more regular people to be able to catch these backdoors and better choose which companies we support with our wallets
- thg 8y agoThis is neither secret, nor a backdoor (in the malicious sense). It's a officially documented[0] debug mode. [0]: Page 85, http://datasheets.chipdb.org/VIA/EBGA/VIA%20C3%20EBGA%20Datasheet%20R1.90.pdf http://datasheets.chipdb.org/VIA/EBGA/VIA%20C3%20EBGA%20Data...
- mverwijs 8y ago> Is it like making smallpox virus available, so it can be studied? You do realize that small pox was eradicated by introducing a malign version of small pox as a vaccine? Kinda like 'black hat medicine'.
- deadbunny 8y agoBecause sunlight is the best disinfectant. Imagine a world where exploitation was only in the hands of the powerful.