Can you trust your hardware

[liborko]

Some interesting news:

EPT article

[nineoaks2004]

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing

[96Bounder30E]

Moved from tech issues...

[midnightsadie]

fjryder said it .we,ve been doing it just as long as they have.and others.

[jkwilson]

fj12ryder wrote:
I remember reading something very similar many years ago about "spying" code used in motherboard chipsets. I have little to no use for the "internet of things". IMO most of those "useful" options are just marketing points, and of very little actual use for the average person. I simply don't need for my refrigerator, microwave, toaster, and doorbell to connect to my network, and thence to the web.

The doorbell is nice. If somebody comes to the door while you are gone, you know it almost immediately. If they are legit, you can talk to them from your phone. If they aren't, you have them on video and know something is up.

[fj12ryder]

old guy wrote:
another reason to buy american

Yeah, good luck with that one. The only difference is who is doing the listening.

[old_guy]

another reason to buy american

[DrewE]

pnichols wrote:

liborko wrote:
Some interesting news:

EPT article

Thanks a lot for the link to that outstandingly clear and disheartening article!

Unfortunately, there are also some rather significant wrong facts in the article, or at least wrong conclusions.

There are many CPUs available for embedded use that have very well defined timing characteristics; that's the rule, rather than the exception, in that field (at least for low to medium end CPUs).

Spectre / Meltdown sorts of vulnerabilities are not a real concern for car brake systems or many similar things because they don't run arbitrary code in the first place, and don't have a means of introducing outside code. They often might not even have separate process memory spaces to protect from each other.

Undocumented instructions on a processor may or may not prove to be security vulnerabilities, but are probably there for reasons far from nefarious, such as production testing or simply as a side effect of how the processor is designed. Typically I would not expect them to be any more vulnerable to attack than documented instructions.

The "Internet of Things" is a giant recipe for potential trouble, though.

[fj12ryder]

I remember reading something very similar many years ago about "spying" code used in motherboard chipsets. I have little to no use for the "internet of things". IMO most of those "useful" options are just marketing points, and of very little actual use for the average person. I simply don't need for my refrigerator, microwave, toaster, and doorbell to connect to my network, and thence to the web.

[Larryect]

I have always wondered, what if these manufactures could just push a button (or issue some sort of command) to just shut everything down........

[azrving]

Baby food, dog food, drywall, lead in toys....nahhh everything is fine, they care about us.

[pnichols]

liborko wrote:
Some interesting news:

EPT article

Thanks a lot for the link to that outstandingly clear and disheartening article!

I've been concerned about that kind of goings-on for decades, and as such severely limit our use of the "Internet of Things". This comes partially from my engineering career years working exclusively in the testing of integrated circuits for proper function before shipping to customers. Integrated circuits and all the supporting electronics around them can and do, fail - or otherwise not always perform as intended.

The above "natural flaws" possible in all ultra-complex electronic systems are in addition to all the possible clandestine use of electronic systems. In order for mankind to ultimately survive ... do we individually need all the computing on and off the Internet that we have and is continuing to come ... probably not.

[T18skyguy]

The chip they used fit on the head of a pin. Nobody noticed it for years.You can never trust the chinese. But truthfully, we did the same thing and got away with it for a long time.