3 ms·
With physical access to a chip the only barrier to accessing that information is analysis time (and the absurd amount of equipment required to analyze things th
by hansvm 5y ago
With physical access to a chip the only barrier to accessing that information is analysis time (and the absurd amount of equipment required to analyze things that small), at least assuming no significant quantum weirdness is mandatory to the chip's operation (i.e., that classical physics with perhaps some simple quantum approximations suffice to roughly describe the system). If the chip is capable of performing cryptographic operations using certain keys, at a minimum you can produce a nand-level algorithm capable of performing those same cryptographic operations with those same keys. If the cryptographic operations in question are known to be of some common pattern (elliptic curves or what have you) then it's also trivial to, in the presence of that nand-level algorithm, deconstruct the secrets.
That said, this tech doesn't look to be sufficient on its own. You probably need to analyze the contents of a chip, not just its structure. The linked article just describes an improvement in learning some kinds of physical structure.
- tgflynn 5y ago> With physical access to a chip the only barrier to accessing that information is analysis time > That said, this tech doesn't look to be sufficient on its own. You probably need to analyze the contents of a chip, not just its structure. Those two statements appear to be contradictory. Could you clarify what you mean by them and in particular what you mean by the "contents" of a chip ? I know that low voltage SEM used to be capable of seeing voltage differences in chips but I have no idea if that's still feasible with the scale of today's technology (resolution tends to be worse at lower beam voltages) and the physical basis for flash memory.
- hansvm 5y agoBy "contents" I did mean reading voltage differences. > Contradictory One statement is that if you control a chip you can produce the stated information eventually. The details are an engineering problem. The other statement is that this particular instance of engineering doesn't suffice I don't think. > SEM I'd be inclined to use EFM instead. Its resolution should suffice for the next few generations of chips.