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I have seen enough stories of supply-line sabotage to think that if you are going to build your infrastructure with Chinese hardware, air-gapping it is a necess

by RunSet 5y ago

I have seen enough stories of supply-line sabotage to think that if you are going to build your infrastructure with Chinese hardware, air-gapping it is a necessity. Probably a good idea to air-gap your pick and place machine even if it is not Chinese.

3pt14159 5y ago
It's really tough to air-gap these days. Are you really going to set up a perimeter where every phone, watch, and computer is dropped off before entry?
- josephcsible 5y ago
  A lot of places do have something like that, and even if you didn't, you could just make sure no official equipment has any wireless capability, and ban connecting any outside electronics to any official equipment.
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Airgapping wouldn’t be enough here since it infects any USB device plugged in. You’ll have to run the USB through some antivirus any time you want to use a new design from a “good” computer.
- miles2sleep 5y ago
  You could go for overkill and establish a one-way data transfer methodology with built in crc/ecc. Receive-only optics on the destination side might be usable.
- upwardbound 5y ago
  You could buy a big box of flash drives and use them as a disposable commodity that is one-time-use. E.g. these flash drives are $3.49. https://smile.amazon.com/Verbatim-Pinstripe-Flash-Drive-49063/dp/9802181749/ https://smile.amazon.com/Verbatim-Pinstripe-Flash-Drive-4906...
  - jjulius 5y ago
    But then you're getting into a bit of an e-waste problem.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  USBs exist that have physical write switches, and there's also old-school media like CD-Rs which can in theory be used too. Hell, with a bit of fiddling, you could probably design a one-way RS232 serial system by simply not connecting the TX pin on a downstream device. Then for good measure snap off the pin and block the corresponding socket's hole with superglue so the cable cannot be reversed. There are also write protector devices which mirror a block storage device as read only, but will not issue a write, as used for forensics.

by RunSet 5y ago

3pt14159 5y ago

It's really tough to air-gap these days. Are you really going to set up a perimeter where every phone, watch, and computer is dropped off before entry?

josephcsible 5y ago
A lot of places do have something like that, and even if you didn't, you could just make sure no official equipment has any wireless capability, and ban connecting any outside electronics to any official equipment.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago

Airgapping wouldn’t be enough here since it infects any USB device plugged in. You’ll have to run the USB through some antivirus any time you want to use a new design from a “good” computer.

miles2sleep 5y ago
You could go for overkill and establish a one-way data transfer methodology with built in crc/ecc. Receive-only optics on the destination side might be usable.
upwardbound 5y ago
You could buy a big box of flash drives and use them as a disposable commodity that is one-time-use. E.g. these flash drives are $3.49. https://smile.amazon.com/Verbatim-Pinstripe-Flash-Drive-49063/dp/9802181749/ https://smile.amazon.com/Verbatim-Pinstripe-Flash-Drive-4906...
- jjulius 5y ago
  But then you're getting into a bit of an e-waste problem.
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
USBs exist that have physical write switches, and there's also old-school media like CD-Rs which can in theory be used too. Hell, with a bit of fiddling, you could probably design a one-way RS232 serial system by simply not connecting the TX pin on a downstream device. Then for good measure snap off the pin and block the corresponding socket's hole with superglue so the cable cannot be reversed. There are also write protector devices which mirror a block storage device as read only, but will not issue a write, as used for forensics.