3 ms·
Are any of these tamper-proof chips in my phone or laptop?
by stickfigure 8d ago
Are any of these tamper-proof chips in my phone or laptop?
- throwaway81523 8d agoI expect typical smart cards like the one in your credit card are harder to crack than the raspberry pi was. Those cards are (or were) also used in TV set-top boxes and back in the day, there was a decades-long arms race between the chip makers and cable TV pirates. The TV pirates were also willing to make large expenditures to crack the chips so they could clone them and sell the clones. There's more about this in Ross Anderson's book "Security Engineering".
- ironqcold 7d agoI’m actually curious now. Thanks, you’ve given me something to do this evening.
- throwaway81523 7d agoI've also heard that the Google Titan security enclave chip (used in Pixel phones) is very hard to crack. Apple has something similar for Iphones, I believe.
- bigiain 7d agoSame. I wonder if my Yubikeys have anything to mitigate this sort of attack. My gut feel says that at their pricepoint and form factor, probably not.
- crote 7d agoA Yubikey is basically a single chip and a bunch of plastic. At their $50 price point, there's plenty of room for some chip manufacturer to skim off a couple of dollars per chip to add an additional metal layer for a tamper protection mesh, and some other gizmos.