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No ASIC is ever going to satisfy your desire to audit. Even if they publish the RTL, you can't verify that this is what they synthesized, that this is what the

No ASIC is ever going to satisfy your desire to audit. Even if they publish the RTL, you can't verify that this is what they synthesized, that this is what the fab actually produced, etc. You have to trust hardware because it's your everything. Even with relatively obvious attacks like backdooring the bootrom (which can be done by modifying just the metal layers!), practically speaking no one is going to ever catch it because modern processes are simply too fine for all but the fabs themselves to physically inspect. This isn't even to mention more clever attacks which attack the doping of the silicon [1] for individual transistors (which cannot be generically detected post fabrication by any publicly known technique). Embrace the suck :) Sure, you can't truly trust hardware, but there's nothing to be done about it anyhow and so you may as well reap the benefits of trusting it. [1] http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf

JohnFen 3y ago
> there's nothing to be done about it anyhow and so you may as well reap the benefits of trusting it. Alternatively, you can avoid relying on any single thing to be secure and use layered security approaches instead.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  There is no layered security approach that can fully mitigate malicious hardware. Even if you have a perfect cryptosystem where everything is running fully homomorphic encryption so that plaintext literally doesn't exist, you're still susceptible at the boundaries and to metadata leakages. On real computers you're also susceptible to the hardware simply not executing your code properly and a hundred other things. Since you can't fully mitigate malicious hardware, you have to state a more limited threat model for there to be any useful discussion.
- sweetjuly 3y ago
  What security boundary can you hope to hold if the CPU is running malicious code straight out of reset (such as through a bootrom implant)? No amount of layers and defense in depth can paper over the fact that your hardware is physically compromised. It's the whole trusting-trust thing. We don't really have a way to solve it, so it's best not to burn yourself out on it.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
We need the ability to create computer hardware at home just like we can create software at home. Until we can make chips in our garages, we'll be at the mercy of giant corporations and the governments looking to subvert our security through them. Decentralization of production is key to our technological emancipation.

JohnFen 3y ago

> there's nothing to be done about it anyhow and so you may as well reap the benefits of trusting it. Alternatively, you can avoid relying on any single thing to be secure and use layered security approaches instead.

AlotOfReading 3y ago
There is no layered security approach that can fully mitigate malicious hardware. Even if you have a perfect cryptosystem where everything is running fully homomorphic encryption so that plaintext literally doesn't exist, you're still susceptible at the boundaries and to metadata leakages. On real computers you're also susceptible to the hardware simply not executing your code properly and a hundred other things. Since you can't fully mitigate malicious hardware, you have to state a more limited threat model for there to be any useful discussion.
sweetjuly 3y ago
What security boundary can you hope to hold if the CPU is running malicious code straight out of reset (such as through a bootrom implant)? No amount of layers and defense in depth can paper over the fact that your hardware is physically compromised. It's the whole trusting-trust thing. We don't really have a way to solve it, so it's best not to burn yourself out on it.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

We need the ability to create computer hardware at home just like we can create software at home. Until we can make chips in our garages, we'll be at the mercy of giant corporations and the governments looking to subvert our security through them. Decentralization of production is key to our technological emancipation.