Crypto to defend chip IP: snake oil or good idea?

Anne & Lynn Wheeler lynn at garlic.com
Sat Aug 5 08:04:08 EDT 2006


Marcos el Ruptor wrote:
> You can use cryptography to protect IP and to prevent cloning of microchips 
> even if they get reverse-engineered, but the cipher would have to possess 
> special properties similar to those of VEST ciphers (see 
> http://www.ecrypt.eu.org/stream/vestp2.html), like support family keying to 
> make every ASIC chip implement different secret but secure logic, etc. 
> eBeam, lasers and other technologies are available for that. ECC and other 
> standard ciphers can't possibly do that.


so one could claim that the difference is along the lines of
trade secrets vis-a-vis patents &/or copyrights .... at least
for the 20,000 circuit scenario i was talking about
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#7

i.e. using authentication to help differentiate "originals"
from "copy chips" (as opposed to hiding, privacy, confidentiality)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#49

and other parts of the thread
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#51 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#52 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#0 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#1 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#2 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#3 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#4 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#5 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#6 Crypto to defend chip IP:
snake oil or good idea?

as an aside, i noticed that a lot of recent spam about copy this and
copy that ... actually claims it to be "replicas" (watches, etc).
it could be difficult to tell the difference from a work-a-like
copy chip ... and an original ... especially if it happens
to be embedded in something.

authentication raises the bar on telling an original vis-a-vis a
counterfeit/copy ... something like the holograms and other brand
stuff they put on various physical products ... or the stuff they put
into money. it doesn't actually try and hide the details of the
original (just making it harder for a counterfeit to pass as an original)

for a little drift, recent post on long ago and far away court case
involving theft of trade secrets
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#46 More Brittle Security

the above also drifted into the subject of security proportional
to risk ... unrelated post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#61

for even more drift ... collected past posts about being involved
in project as an undergraduate that built a clone mainframe control
unit ... and article that was written blaiming us for the resulting
several billion dollar/annum market.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

the other analogy is electronic commerce that has attempted
to use privacy/confidentiality to hide transaction details as
countermeasure to fraudulent transactions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3

compared to x9.59 financial standard using transaction strong
authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#x959

to preserve the integrity of the finanical infrastructure for all
retail transactions (requirement given the x9a10 financial standard
working group for the standard)... w/o needing privacy/confidentiality
(hiding) as countermeasure to fraudulent transactions

and further drift ... about possibility of various kinds of
attacks (replay attacks, mitm-attacks) w/o strong authentication
or where authentication is used for a device w/o having
strong authentication on an actual transaction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#5 New ISO standard aims to
ensure the security of financial transactions on the Internet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#7 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#9 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#10 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#12 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#14 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#22 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#26 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#41 Naked Payments IV - let's all
go naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#42 Naked Payments II

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