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I have a friend that works for a chip company and he said he couldn’t get into details but the amount of back doors in communication companies and in chips woul

I have a friend that works for a chip company and he said he couldn’t get into details but the amount of back doors in communication companies and in chips would scare the shit out of me.

pjc50 6y ago
Counterpoint: I actually do work at a chip company and have never heard of any of this internally. Even from the people working on secure biometrics. Neither of these anecdotes proves anything.
- dylan604 6y ago
  The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club. If a chip company was placing back doors into their products, I doubt it would be something they would talk about around the water cooler. However, if a back door was implemented on this level, if some one broke rule #1 and rule #2 of fight club, then I don't see how it would be able to be kept quite after that.
  - duxup 6y ago
    So we only believe people who claim something is happening with no proof ... because anyone who doesn't see it happening just isn't in the special circle of folks doing it?
    - dylan604 6y ago
      what are you on about? if nobody in the know talks, how does anyone find out about it? if people are talking about it, then anyone with any know-how will start to investigate. if you choose to believe something someone tells you with no proof, then that's on you. claiming we do the same thing is a broad brush that i'm not getting painted on by thank you very much
      - duxup 6y ago
        I don't understand what you're saying. We had one anecdote saying a thing is happening, the second from someone who says it isn't. Your post seemed to indicate that the second post isn't true because maybe that person just doesn't know about it. That seems to refute the second and assume the first is true.
        VRay 6y ago
        Isn't telling people about this sort of backdoor the sort of thing that could cause you to commit suicide with multiple gunshot wounds to the back of your head? I don't think any anecdotal evidence one way or the other is worth considering
- mschuster91 6y ago
  What about this here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25043465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25043465
dboreham 6y ago
I question this. Actually I'm going to assert this is only true if your friend is referring to hidden back doors that he believes exist. I don't believe any employee of a chip company is aware of a back door knowingly added to their own product (with one exception see below). I say this because NSA seems more clever than that, and because any scheme to explicitly add back doors is bound to be eventually exposed. Instead they do things like have their former employees and contractors hired into tech companies, and those folks add innocuous bugs that can plausibly be denied as back doors. Also I bet they look for bugs that can be used as back doors, given access to source code and chip design data, then fail to fix them.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > I don't believe any employee of a chip company is aware of a back door knowingly added to their own product (with one exception see below). Most if not all ICs above a certain intelligence level have JTAG, which effectively is a backdoor. All you now need is (for those chips that support it, in the first place...) a way to bypass the OTP fuses "preventing" JTAG access - this kind of vulnerability turns out often enough to be saying it's commonplace.
  - dboreham 6y ago
    Of course everyone knows about JTAG. It's not a "backdoor".
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
This anecdote seems consistent with basically all router-modems having hidden root accounts. I'm not sure if the claim as written necessarily goes beyond that.

I have a friend that works for a chip company and he said he couldn’t get into details but the amount of back doors in communication companies and in chips would scare the shit out of me.

pjc50 6y ago

Counterpoint: I actually do work at a chip company and have never heard of any of this internally. Even from the people working on secure biometrics. Neither of these anecdotes proves anything.

dylan604 6y ago
The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club. If a chip company was placing back doors into their products, I doubt it would be something they would talk about around the water cooler. However, if a back door was implemented on this level, if some one broke rule #1 and rule #2 of fight club, then I don't see how it would be able to be kept quite after that.
- duxup 6y ago
  So we only believe people who claim something is happening with no proof ... because anyone who doesn't see it happening just isn't in the special circle of folks doing it?
  - dylan604 6y ago
    what are you on about? if nobody in the know talks, how does anyone find out about it? if people are talking about it, then anyone with any know-how will start to investigate. if you choose to believe something someone tells you with no proof, then that's on you. claiming we do the same thing is a broad brush that i'm not getting painted on by thank you very much
    - duxup 6y ago
      I don't understand what you're saying. We had one anecdote saying a thing is happening, the second from someone who says it isn't. Your post seemed to indicate that the second post isn't true because maybe that person just doesn't know about it. That seems to refute the second and assume the first is true.
      - VRay 6y ago
        Isn't telling people about this sort of backdoor the sort of thing that could cause you to commit suicide with multiple gunshot wounds to the back of your head? I don't think any anecdotal evidence one way or the other is worth considering
mschuster91 6y ago
What about this here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25043465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25043465

dboreham 6y ago

I question this. Actually I'm going to assert this is only true if your friend is referring to hidden back doors that he believes exist. I don't believe any employee of a chip company is aware of a back door knowingly added to their own product (with one exception see below). I say this because NSA seems more clever than that, and because any scheme to explicitly add back doors is bound to be eventually exposed. Instead they do things like have their former employees and contractors hired into tech companies, and those folks add innocuous bugs that can plausibly be denied as back doors. Also I bet they look for bugs that can be used as back doors, given access to source code and chip design data, then fail to fix them.

mschuster91 6y ago
> I don't believe any employee of a chip company is aware of a back door knowingly added to their own product (with one exception see below). Most if not all ICs above a certain intelligence level have JTAG, which effectively is a backdoor. All you now need is (for those chips that support it, in the first place...) a way to bypass the OTP fuses "preventing" JTAG access - this kind of vulnerability turns out often enough to be saying it's commonplace.
- dboreham 6y ago
  Of course everyone knows about JTAG. It's not a "backdoor".

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

This anecdote seems consistent with basically all router-modems having hidden root accounts. I'm not sure if the claim as written necessarily goes beyond that.