3 ms·

The real point are not "batteries transformed in bombs" but black boxes on sale. Hw must be open, sw must be public for public safety interests. Not only: visib

by kkfx 2y ago

The real point are not "batteries transformed in bombs" but black boxes on sale. Hw must be open, sw must be public for public safety interests. Not only: visibility/accessibility must be a surveilled parameter, of course, we can't really see what's inside a CPU, if it respect or not the public open hw design, but any device clearly designed against visibility and repairability must be sanctioned.

monkeyfun 2y ago
Excellent point that strikes at the essence of this. Already there were valid concerns about hardware backdoors and tampering, and now with such a dramatic event... well I can't exactly say I expect any change, but I do greatly hope this could motivate more such hardware transparency. However, a counter-thought: When a shipment can simply be intercepted and parts quickly swapped out, and when the batteries are difficult to casually detect alteration-of, how far do we take transparency to feel safe-enough? Footage inside every cargo container? Even more aggressive anti-tampering packaging with hard to replicate seals? (Meant to be a very genuine question, if it sounds silly I'm just not very informed as to what good solutions would be.)
- kkfx 2y ago
  It's not sufficient, of course, but it's still the best we can do now, not only for mere safety but also for innovation, interoperability. In such an open world there is little room to purposefully sell crap to sell after fixes for instance, and that's very bad for some business but very good for the society and for nature, much reducing waste. After a certain amount of evolution even swapping component became harder, because anything is really transparent enough you still have margins, but with higher risks than now and more important much bigger reputation damage, which hurt much in such society (remember the Internet Manifesto for reference). Beside that the guarantee does not exists in nature, but the likeliness of an event have a really big impact on our life.
dredmorbius 2y ago
Even open HW/SW requirements / standards don't protect against this. See Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust": <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358198.358210 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358198.358210>. More recently, and very much part of the extant cybersecurity landscape are zero-day and backdoor vulnerabilities which are prevalent in both closed and open-source software.[1] And the typical end-use buyer is not equipped to audit code or even interpret audit assurances (e.g., some level of certification on a device). That might work for large-scale organisational buyers (corporations, national governments, major NGOs, militaries), but would challenge even many of these. TFA goes into depth on how HW characteristics already vary tremendously even within product lines and production runs, and firmware modifications could weaponise otherwise benign-seeming hardware. Open SW/HW might help, somewhat, but not against a motivated state-level or other advanced actor (e.g., major narco syndicate, independent militant organisations, and the like). The requirement is far from sufficient however. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I'm trying hard to not open that particular religious war, though my bias is that evidence tends to suggest F/OSS is more secure than closed source in general.
- fsflover 2y ago
  This problem can be solved by the bootstrappable builds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368835
- kkfx 2y ago
  Surely we can't guarantee a really trustable system, in the end even Linux or Gcc aren't really audited before use. BUT still having open design, FLOSS code published from the first commit and developed openly allow to trust the people instead of the product. An example, some (Handala crew) observed that Vidisco (an Israeli company) produce the vast majority of airports and ports security scanners, and they are proprietary devices running closed source software, so potentially they have some code to allow not seeing things the Mossad marks as "not to be seen" with some kind of "tagging" or even remote commands. Could their customers trust Vidisco or John Smith llc doesn't matter? If their design it's open and their code developed FLOSS openly in the wild maybe. We can't be sure the code we see from it's start is really running inside their devices, we can't audit entirely BUT it's still much better than now. Similarly in an open world innovation inevitably happen mostly in public funded academia, meaning it's perfectly possible to infiltrate but it's still the best option we have to ensure trust and interoperability, as long as we have normal interoperability the possibility to keep something really hidden is far, far less than now. Aside, obviously States must produce in house all their critical gear, at least for some "not constant" productions (like weapons) with domestic partnership with industries normally doing other things (like automotive). A corporative world is a savage, unsafe world and probably can't be stable as well.

by kkfx 2y ago

monkeyfun 2y ago

Excellent point that strikes at the essence of this. Already there were valid concerns about hardware backdoors and tampering, and now with such a dramatic event... well I can't exactly say I expect any change, but I do greatly hope this could motivate more such hardware transparency. However, a counter-thought: When a shipment can simply be intercepted and parts quickly swapped out, and when the batteries are difficult to casually detect alteration-of, how far do we take transparency to feel safe-enough? Footage inside every cargo container? Even more aggressive anti-tampering packaging with hard to replicate seals? (Meant to be a very genuine question, if it sounds silly I'm just not very informed as to what good solutions would be.)

kkfx 2y ago
It's not sufficient, of course, but it's still the best we can do now, not only for mere safety but also for innovation, interoperability. In such an open world there is little room to purposefully sell crap to sell after fixes for instance, and that's very bad for some business but very good for the society and for nature, much reducing waste. After a certain amount of evolution even swapping component became harder, because anything is really transparent enough you still have margins, but with higher risks than now and more important much bigger reputation damage, which hurt much in such society (remember the Internet Manifesto for reference). Beside that the guarantee does not exists in nature, but the likeliness of an event have a really big impact on our life.

dredmorbius 2y ago

Even open HW/SW requirements / standards don't protect against this. See Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust": <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358198.358210 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358198.358210>. More recently, and very much part of the extant cybersecurity landscape are zero-day and backdoor vulnerabilities which are prevalent in both closed and open-source software.[1] And the typical end-use buyer is not equipped to audit code or even interpret audit assurances (e.g., some level of certification on a device). That might work for large-scale organisational buyers (corporations, national governments, major NGOs, militaries), but would challenge even many of these. TFA goes into depth on how HW characteristics already vary tremendously even within product lines and production runs, and firmware modifications could weaponise otherwise benign-seeming hardware. Open SW/HW might help, somewhat, but not against a motivated state-level or other advanced actor (e.g., major narco syndicate, independent militant organisations, and the like). The requirement is far from sufficient however. ________________________________ Notes: 1. I'm trying hard to not open that particular religious war, though my bias is that evidence tends to suggest F/OSS is more secure than closed source in general.

fsflover 2y ago
This problem can be solved by the bootstrappable builds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368835
kkfx 2y ago
Surely we can't guarantee a really trustable system, in the end even Linux or Gcc aren't really audited before use. BUT still having open design, FLOSS code published from the first commit and developed openly allow to trust the people instead of the product. An example, some (Handala crew) observed that Vidisco (an Israeli company) produce the vast majority of airports and ports security scanners, and they are proprietary devices running closed source software, so potentially they have some code to allow not seeing things the Mossad marks as "not to be seen" with some kind of "tagging" or even remote commands. Could their customers trust Vidisco or John Smith llc doesn't matter? If their design it's open and their code developed FLOSS openly in the wild maybe. We can't be sure the code we see from it's start is really running inside their devices, we can't audit entirely BUT it's still much better than now. Similarly in an open world innovation inevitably happen mostly in public funded academia, meaning it's perfectly possible to infiltrate but it's still the best option we have to ensure trust and interoperability, as long as we have normal interoperability the possibility to keep something really hidden is far, far less than now. Aside, obviously States must produce in house all their critical gear, at least for some "not constant" productions (like weapons) with domestic partnership with industries normally doing other things (like automotive). A corporative world is a savage, unsafe world and probably can't be stable as well.