2 ms·
Clive Robinson on Schneier's blog predicted lots of these problems after arguing they were a law of nature. He said any form of matter or energy connecting two
by nickpsecurity 7y ago
Clive Robinson on Schneier's blog predicted lots of these problems after arguing they were a law of nature. He said any form of matter or energy connecting two machines might create a side channel. He said we'd have to clock all the inputs and outputs, make them predictable, and then "energy gap" the systems. We both already knew about CPU leaks since that was described as risky in 1990's. Sure enough, air-gap-jumping malware and processor leaks showed up.
Later, getting a high-level view of hardware reinforced it was a law of nature. First, there's all kinds of RF leaks that attackers might pick up from normal operation. Second, most systems aren't fault/leak-proof if attackers actively hit the system with different physical effects or RF. Finally, each process shrink increases how easily chips, including mitigations on them, break. It looked like the stuff at 28nm was kind of broken by design with fixes and stuff built in to delay failures user would notice.
This all sounds like the laws of physics are a huge obstacle to computers (a) working at all and (b) keeping secrets. Achieving (a) takes hundreds of millions to billions in R&D each year. I can only imaging what (b) might take.