3 ms·

It's worse than that... functionality testing wouldn't be enough. Short of putting every chip under an electron microscope you can't really guarantee it.

• worik 5y ago
  Random sampling would be sufficient.
  • hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    And the good news is you can sell each sampled chip at insane markup, because those few are guaranteed.
    • JohnBooty 5y ago
      I'm sure somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite certain that scanning the chips with an electron microscope would destroy them. You'd need to decap the chips, and so on. But, perhaps there's a nondestructive way.
• ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Can you guarantee that the router delivered to you actually came from CISCO and has not been modified in any way? What if some chip was replaced? Short of putting every chip under an electron microscope you can't really guarantee that either
• JohnBooty 5y ago
  Right, yeah, I was thinking physical verification. Functionality testing could verify known behaviors, but could never formally prove the non-existence of unknown, hostile behaviors. - "time bomb" style hostile functionality that only unlocks after a certain time - hostile functionality that can be remotely unlocked by obscure behaviors. think: more advanced versions of port knocking, specially (mis?)crafted TCP/IP payloads - etc