What's in my hard drive? How can I get rid of it?

[Arthur Chance]

On 18/02/2015 03:03, kpneal at pobox.com wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 01:15:56AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>> On Tue, 17 Feb 2015 19:07:01 -0500, Jon Radel wrote:
>>> On 2/17/15 6:04 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 17 Feb 2015 15:24:16 -0700, jd1008 wrote:
>>>>> A people's tribunal of highly capable software and hardware
>>>>> engineers is desperately needed to look into the source codes of
>>>>> all SW and HW designs and implementations - including the compilers
>>>>> and assemblers.
>>>> We are still free to write Assembler opcode using an hex editor, that
>>>> way nothing could go wrong. When I started, I didn't write opcode
>>>> using an hex editor, but I used an Assmbler editor that didn't
>>>> provide macros, this editor was close to an hex editor. There was no
>>>> way to correct something by inserting code.
>>>>
>>> And you expect the microcode to only implement the documented
>>> instruction set with no extra goodies?  Trusting sort you are.
>>
>> :D
>>
>> Then we indeed need to reed every single line that is in the
>> RAMs/ROMs/etc..  Hahaha, I still remember how much days I needed to get
>> through a 2 KiB listing of Assembler on listing paper. I suspect it's
>> impossible to check 20 MiBs and more of software that way.
>
> You guys should hang out on the Cypherpunks lists. Those guys talk about
> doing things like tearing down chips to analyze the circuitry. And then
> someone will point out that variations in doping may cause issues that you
> won't find with a simple chip teardown. And so on and so on.

Like this paper (titled Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans)

http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf

A quick search for "hardware trojan" turns up enough material to fuel 
nightmares for the paranoid.

> *shakes head*
>
> And normal folk wonder why I don't trust computers.
>

That's perfectly normal for sysadmins. :-)

-- 
Those who do not learn from computing history are doomed to
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