4 ms·

I mean, you're not wrong... but the chip industry moves slowly, and by your own definition, most chips produced today would not be considered well designed. Al

by ohazi 6y ago

I mean, you're not wrong... but the chip industry moves slowly, and by your own definition, most chips produced today would not be considered well designed. Also, once you protect against power glitching, they'll move on to clock glitching. It's endless. Historically, this is not something that chip companies or their customers have cared about. Again, unless you're designing an HSM, hardware security is a checkbox sales item that is adequately satisfied by a probably-not-actually-secure firmware readout bit. The sales team is happy with this. The buyers on the other end designing shitty IoT products with a 2 year lifespan can now put a "secure" sticker on the box.

avian 6y ago
The shitty IoT products can then also use a shitty battery/power supply because the advanced brownout protection the grandparent is talking about won't be spazzing out every 5 minutes that a LED causes voltage to droop. It's a win-win.
- xnyan 6y ago
  I worked in consumer, industrial and medical device testing industry for several years. When working with device manufacturers in the consumer space, for most of them most of the time cost of the device is the primary and overriding concern for the product. Cost mattered for industrial too, but it was balanced by performance and other considerations. For consumer, it's just cost. Anything that pushed the bill of materials up = bad, not at all win-win in their mind. "Grandpa buys bad electronic devices all the time and will keep doing so, why throw our money away for no reason?" would be a summery of their argument/thought process. Medical devices are a whole different beast and money was far less of a consideration, or rather, they are far less worried about the cost because it's far easier to recoup the cost of the device.
- dbuder 6y ago
  Brownout detect is way too expensive, aggressive sleep mode: 200nA, brownout detect 54uA. I just accept everything can be hacked, works both ways. Vendors won't tell you how the chip actually works, dump the firmware and if you are getting paid, photograph and xray the die.

by ohazi 6y ago

avian 6y ago

The shitty IoT products can then also use a shitty battery/power supply because the advanced brownout protection the grandparent is talking about won't be spazzing out every 5 minutes that a LED causes voltage to droop. It's a win-win.

xnyan 6y ago
I worked in consumer, industrial and medical device testing industry for several years. When working with device manufacturers in the consumer space, for most of them most of the time cost of the device is the primary and overriding concern for the product. Cost mattered for industrial too, but it was balanced by performance and other considerations. For consumer, it's just cost. Anything that pushed the bill of materials up = bad, not at all win-win in their mind. "Grandpa buys bad electronic devices all the time and will keep doing so, why throw our money away for no reason?" would be a summery of their argument/thought process. Medical devices are a whole different beast and money was far less of a consideration, or rather, they are far less worried about the cost because it's far easier to recoup the cost of the device.
dbuder 6y ago
Brownout detect is way too expensive, aggressive sleep mode: 200nA, brownout detect 54uA. I just accept everything can be hacked, works both ways. Vendors won't tell you how the chip actually works, dump the firmware and if you are getting paid, photograph and xray the die.