Re: trusting the processor chip

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 9:01 AM 4/26/96, Christian Wettergren wrote:
...
>They "promised" to build their own "processor tester" to try to find
>the most obvious ones at least. But it will be very hard to find all of
>these bugs, judging from the released bugs. Some of them are only
>appearing sporadically under a pretty complicated set of circumstances,
>like what is in the pipeline, the cache etc...
>
>The processor is ever important, if it is illdefined or flakey, it is
>almost impossible to build security on top of it.

Maybe true in theory, under special circumstances, but not something of
immediate importance. Finding bugs is important, but no modern processor
chip set (including the peripheral chips) is likely to be "100% secure,"
whatever that means. (The NSA and its minions put out the "Rainbow Books"
to define this, and few machines come close to the top rating...)

There was a British plan some years back to develop a "provably secure"
microprocessor for life-critical applications, e.g. train controllers. It
was called "Viper." Last I heard, the project was not progressing.

It seems that most people would rather use the hundreds of MIPS of
processing power of a modern, high-density processor that the sub-MIPS
power of a Viper-type chip.

(I'm not of course saying that processing power and security are inverses
of each other, only noting that they haven't gone together so far.)

The most famed chip flaw of all time had no security implications, nor
would it ever have affected a single life. (Except stock market lives.) I'm
glad Intel offered a recall and fixed the bug, but the plain fact is that
the bug truly was obscure and could only be demonstrated under contrived
conditions.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."