13 ms·

This is both awesome and terrifying. I'll never forget this research(https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hides-inside-computer-chip/ https

by bogwog 7y ago

This is both awesome and terrifying. I'll never forget this research(https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hides-inside-computer-chip/ https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hi...) which showed how an attacker can insert a backdoor into a chip during the manufacturing process in a way that is practically impossible to catch. That makes me very concerned about using a chip completely manufactured in China. But at the same time, RISC-V needs to happen. It's a critical step to move computing forward. It's just a damn shame that this is the way it's going to happen. Hopefully this will push RISC-V manufacturing efforts in the US before the market becomes flooded with cheap open source and most likely backdoored chips manufactured in China.

microcolonel 7y ago
Nobody can afford to keep the compilers and subroutine libraries to themselves, so the more people use the ISA, the more useful it becomes. Even if you wouldn't in a million years deploy such a chip at your financial institution or on your email server; or, without a separate network, in your home.
flohofwoe 7y ago
Not sure how to best say it, but I think in the end it's better to not put any trust into any hardware- (or software-) provider anyway, it shouldn't matter whether your chips are built by a "good" or "bad" actor, just assume it's a bad actor when designing the systems around it. Maybe this leads to more robust systems overall, also for cases when there was no "evil intent" (see Spectre/Meltdown).
- whatshisface 7y ago
  That's not practical. If bytes anywhere in memory can trigger a backdoor, webservers won't be possible because they have to listen to arbitrary requests.
  - madez 7y ago
    It's maybe not practical, but it is not impossible. You can build a four-component system that does the job. You build two computers with different ISAs from vendors you assume to not share a backdoor, and let all I/O happen through a simple verifier, that copies the input for both machines, compares byte for byte their output. For cryptographic purposes, the random number generators of the machines must be linked, which would be our forth component. The software for each computer should be derived from different sources, which must follow the same I/O specification.
    - analognoise 7y ago
      Just build it into an FPGA. Make it simple enough to verify. Done. "Everything has vulnerabilities!" - Bullshit. Connect your Ethernet MII to a decoder that sets an LED if a certain pattern comes by. Can you hack it, to make it turn on when it isn't supposed to, with crafted network packets alone? Nope! Perfect security.
      - bogwog 7y ago
        How about you actually read the paper, or at least the article? https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hides-inside-computer-chip/ https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hi...
strooper 7y ago
Is there a way to know that the present chips are not backdoored? Or, backdoored by US? Why should the world be concern about Chinese backdoors and not US ones?
- seandhi 7y ago
  Because most of the world has flourished under Pax Americana. The world can only imagine what the Chinese as a world power will bring.
  - typon 7y ago
    I imagine Latin America and the Middle East would disagree a tad bit with you.
    - odiroot 7y ago
      Middle East is a completely different and much longer story and USA just got involved in a drive-by fashion merely decades ago.
      - typon 7y ago
        Setting up the case to bomb Iraq twice is a little more than a drive-by. Its more like pre-medidated murder i'd say
      - orbifold 7y ago
        The US has been involved one way or another in the Middle East since they took over assets of the British and French Empire in the Region.
    - ajross 7y ago
      Latin America absolutely would. Yes, there were crimes that we shouldn't forget, but the whole hemisphere is vastly wealthier than it was a century ago, owing almost exclusively to global peace, world trade, and their existence within the US sphere of influence that limited conflict to just a few hot spots. The middle east didn't see the same benefit, and why? Because they sat in the middle of a cold war zone of contention that stoked every existing bit of strife into a hot war.
whoevercares 7y ago
Given the manufacturing profit margin, it’s unimaginable if any big player will take the lead(unless the government chime in, but wait that’s how China works!)
elamje 7y ago
Can you explain why the RISC-V needs to happen? I am not familiar with the chip industry, so I don't understand why the RISC-V will move computing forward and x86/ARM won't move it forward. Edit: Does it have to do with being open-source?
- lsllc 7y ago
  Any industry needs competition! Sadly the consolidation of the [server] processor market over the last decade from half a dozen or more very different designs (which had collectively driven computing for the last 30+ years) has left us with the duopoly of Intel who's not really innovating and ARM who kind of are, but mostly in mobile. Obviously, RISC-V also needs software support; gcc supports it, Golang has added RISC-V as a target (although it's not yet implemented) and there are several projects working on LLVM (e.g. lowRISC and SiFive's port). Having played around with the Fedora-RISCV port under QEMU, it's actually surprisingly good thus far. Having an open-source processor design with good software support that anyone can manufacture without royalties is a good thing and will hopefully spur both Intel and ARM into innovation.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Removal of "percentage of revenue" based royalties is probably the big one. Others may cite the open source ISA, but I think royalties is the big deal. See Western Digital's plans for RISCV. Taking a 1.5 to 2 percent "off the top revenue/not-profit skim" away is a big deal. Edit: Fwiw, I hope the open source ISA has secondary societal benefits. I'm not skeptical, just pragmatic. Follow the money.
- madez 7y ago
  Neither AMD nor Intel offer x86 chips that give end users full access to the highest privilege levels.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tyingq 7y ago
"That makes me very concerned about using a chip completely manufactured in China." I understand the risk, but isn't that cat "already out of the bag" for ARM licensees and other ISA implementations? Is there something particularly special about this one?
ibic 7y ago
I don't get it - NSA has inserted many backdoors in different devices like routers and even hard disks, I don't recall China has such a record. Why are you so concerned about China but the U.S. ?
- joey_bob 7y ago
  I don't get it - CPC has inserted many backdoors in different devices like edge routers and even cell phones, I don't recall U.S. has such a record. Why are you so concerned about U.S. but the China ?
- nwah1 7y ago
  Lenovo and many other Chinese companies have been caught adding rootkits to their laptops, etc.
  - pritambaral 7y ago
    Dell and other American companies too.
- pkilgore 7y ago
  This is nonsense whataboutism backed by...poor memory?? Also, just because there are concerns about Chinese back-doors does not mean the author is entirely unconcerned about US back-doors, nor does it even tangentially relate to his argument. (In fact, I think the author would agree that both are equally bad.) At least, however, in the US there are enforceable State and Federal Constitutional protections for citizens and residents that limit the ability of the government to spy on its citizens. Even if these protections are not perfect (they are not) or sometimes abused (they are), they are objectively better than the clusterfk of privacy and rights violations the Chinese state inflicts on its citizens every day, with the consent and complicity of national technology firms. It may not mean much if you're not a US Citizen (it shouldn't) but like it or not this is a new front of national security, and to "not get it" is to miss the point entirely.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  Yeah, the NSA does it, totally cool for the Chinese to do it as well..
perspective1 7y ago
Any government that can backdoor chips will do it. Now at least you'll get to pick who you give that access to.
yorwba 7y ago
Considering that this was announced by Alibaba Cloud, there's no need to worry about hardware backdoors since you probably won't be able to buy the chips anyway. If you are hosting something in their cloud, a backdoor is unnecessary, since the authorities can just come knocking on the front door if they need anything.
duxup 7y ago
IIRC in the wake of Spectre, Google had a security blog that noted that even at Google with all the layers of software involved they felt that there really was no way to ensure that something in those layers isn't running something unexpected / doing something it shouldn't. IIRC The general topic was speculative execution and such security, but I think it also made it clear that more generally all the chips, software involved ... you just can't know. To be clear, I don't say that to dispute anything you're saying, quite the opposite.

by bogwog 7y ago

microcolonel 7y ago

Nobody can afford to keep the compilers and subroutine libraries to themselves, so the more people use the ISA, the more useful it becomes. Even if you wouldn't in a million years deploy such a chip at your financial institution or on your email server; or, without a separate network, in your home.

flohofwoe 7y ago

Not sure how to best say it, but I think in the end it's better to not put any trust into any hardware- (or software-) provider anyway, it shouldn't matter whether your chips are built by a "good" or "bad" actor, just assume it's a bad actor when designing the systems around it. Maybe this leads to more robust systems overall, also for cases when there was no "evil intent" (see Spectre/Meltdown).

whatshisface 7y ago
That's not practical. If bytes anywhere in memory can trigger a backdoor, webservers won't be possible because they have to listen to arbitrary requests.
- madez 7y ago
  It's maybe not practical, but it is not impossible. You can build a four-component system that does the job. You build two computers with different ISAs from vendors you assume to not share a backdoor, and let all I/O happen through a simple verifier, that copies the input for both machines, compares byte for byte their output. For cryptographic purposes, the random number generators of the machines must be linked, which would be our forth component. The software for each computer should be derived from different sources, which must follow the same I/O specification.
  - analognoise 7y ago
    Just build it into an FPGA. Make it simple enough to verify. Done. "Everything has vulnerabilities!" - Bullshit. Connect your Ethernet MII to a decoder that sets an LED if a certain pattern comes by. Can you hack it, to make it turn on when it isn't supposed to, with crafted network packets alone? Nope! Perfect security.
    - bogwog 7y ago
      How about you actually read the paper, or at least the article? https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hides-inside-computer-chip/ https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hi...

strooper 7y ago

Is there a way to know that the present chips are not backdoored? Or, backdoored by US? Why should the world be concern about Chinese backdoors and not US ones?

seandhi 7y ago
Because most of the world has flourished under Pax Americana. The world can only imagine what the Chinese as a world power will bring.
- typon 7y ago
  I imagine Latin America and the Middle East would disagree a tad bit with you.
  - odiroot 7y ago
    Middle East is a completely different and much longer story and USA just got involved in a drive-by fashion merely decades ago.
    - typon 7y ago
      Setting up the case to bomb Iraq twice is a little more than a drive-by. Its more like pre-medidated murder i'd say
    - orbifold 7y ago
      The US has been involved one way or another in the Middle East since they took over assets of the British and French Empire in the Region.
  - ajross 7y ago
    Latin America absolutely would. Yes, there were crimes that we shouldn't forget, but the whole hemisphere is vastly wealthier than it was a century ago, owing almost exclusively to global peace, world trade, and their existence within the US sphere of influence that limited conflict to just a few hot spots. The middle east didn't see the same benefit, and why? Because they sat in the middle of a cold war zone of contention that stoked every existing bit of strife into a hot war.

whoevercares 7y ago

Given the manufacturing profit margin, it’s unimaginable if any big player will take the lead(unless the government chime in, but wait that’s how China works!)

elamje 7y ago

Can you explain why the RISC-V needs to happen? I am not familiar with the chip industry, so I don't understand why the RISC-V will move computing forward and x86/ARM won't move it forward. Edit: Does it have to do with being open-source?

lsllc 7y ago
Any industry needs competition! Sadly the consolidation of the [server] processor market over the last decade from half a dozen or more very different designs (which had collectively driven computing for the last 30+ years) has left us with the duopoly of Intel who's not really innovating and ARM who kind of are, but mostly in mobile. Obviously, RISC-V also needs software support; gcc supports it, Golang has added RISC-V as a target (although it's not yet implemented) and there are several projects working on LLVM (e.g. lowRISC and SiFive's port). Having played around with the Fedora-RISCV port under QEMU, it's actually surprisingly good thus far. Having an open-source processor design with good software support that anyone can manufacture without royalties is a good thing and will hopefully spur both Intel and ARM into innovation.
tyingq 7y ago
Removal of "percentage of revenue" based royalties is probably the big one. Others may cite the open source ISA, but I think royalties is the big deal. See Western Digital's plans for RISCV. Taking a 1.5 to 2 percent "off the top revenue/not-profit skim" away is a big deal. Edit: Fwiw, I hope the open source ISA has secondary societal benefits. I'm not skeptical, just pragmatic. Follow the money.
madez 7y ago
Neither AMD nor Intel offer x86 chips that give end users full access to the highest privilege levels.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tyingq 7y ago

"That makes me very concerned about using a chip completely manufactured in China." I understand the risk, but isn't that cat "already out of the bag" for ARM licensees and other ISA implementations? Is there something particularly special about this one?

ibic 7y ago

I don't get it - NSA has inserted many backdoors in different devices like routers and even hard disks, I don't recall China has such a record. Why are you so concerned about China but the U.S. ?

joey_bob 7y ago
I don't get it - CPC has inserted many backdoors in different devices like edge routers and even cell phones, I don't recall U.S. has such a record. Why are you so concerned about U.S. but the China ?
nwah1 7y ago
Lenovo and many other Chinese companies have been caught adding rootkits to their laptops, etc.
- pritambaral 7y ago
  Dell and other American companies too.
pkilgore 7y ago
This is nonsense whataboutism backed by...poor memory?? Also, just because there are concerns about Chinese back-doors does not mean the author is entirely unconcerned about US back-doors, nor does it even tangentially relate to his argument. (In fact, I think the author would agree that both are equally bad.) At least, however, in the US there are enforceable State and Federal Constitutional protections for citizens and residents that limit the ability of the government to spy on its citizens. Even if these protections are not perfect (they are not) or sometimes abused (they are), they are objectively better than the clusterfk of privacy and rights violations the Chinese state inflicts on its citizens every day, with the consent and complicity of national technology firms. It may not mean much if you're not a US Citizen (it shouldn't) but like it or not this is a new front of national security, and to "not get it" is to miss the point entirely.
vorpalhex 7y ago
Yeah, the NSA does it, totally cool for the Chinese to do it as well..

perspective1 7y ago

Any government that can backdoor chips will do it. Now at least you'll get to pick who you give that access to.

yorwba 7y ago

Considering that this was announced by Alibaba Cloud, there's no need to worry about hardware backdoors since you probably won't be able to buy the chips anyway. If you are hosting something in their cloud, a backdoor is unnecessary, since the authorities can just come knocking on the front door if they need anything.

duxup 7y ago

IIRC in the wake of Spectre, Google had a security blog that noted that even at Google with all the layers of software involved they felt that there really was no way to ensure that something in those layers isn't running something unexpected / doing something it shouldn't. IIRC The general topic was speculative execution and such security, but I think it also made it clear that more generally all the chips, software involved ... you just can't know. To be clear, I don't say that to dispute anything you're saying, quite the opposite.