this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
110 points (93.7% liked)
Technology
58091 readers
3119 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't think it's so much "security by obscurity" as it's an issue of a much lower bar for chip production. Intentional back doors or malware represent a huge risk for a product line, so manufacturers won't put them in without someone like the NSA leaning on them. It's a simple risk/benefit calculation.
But the risk is much lower if you can snag a processor design off the 'net, make your modifications, send it off to a fab and sell it under a fly-by-night operation. If it's ever discovered, you take the money and run.
I don't see it as irrational. You're thinking about it the wrong way round.
Manufacturers buy chips from proven sources, where the chip can be traced back to the fab that made it. The entire system of trust is built on the assumption that the chip designers and fabs are trustworthy and that the shady stuff happens elsewhere in the supply chain.
When the designers can't be trusted, it breaks everything. Up until now it hasn't been a problem except in extremely sensitive areas like military equipment - only governments can force a company to risk everything by compromising their own products. But take the risk away - make it cheap enough to design new microcontrollers - and what's to stop a chip designer from taking money from (for example) the Russian mafia? IoT is huge, everywhere, and Risc-V is ideally suited for it.