Unique locks on microchips could reduce hardware piracy

[David G. Koontz]

David G. Koontz wrote:
> http://www.physorg.com/news123951684.html
> 

Two more articles:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-fighting-the-black-market-crypto-locks-for-cpus-other-ics.html
This one has a bit of the technical description

http://itnews.com.au/News/71553,chip-lock-aims-to-end-hardware-piracy.aspx

This has some comments including:

"Ok, so ow the hardware has to 'phone home'; before it will work. does this
mean that worldwide legitimate chip production has to halt every time the
patent holder has a server failure?
secondly, if someone has the capability of turning design documents into
working silicon, they also have the capability to make changes to the
design. what's to stop them from simply removing the lock circuitry from the
design before making the chips?
It seems to me that this DRM is like all other DRM. It causes problems for
the legal users, and won't do anything to stop the illegal users."

Posted by Kelly Gray, 8/03/2008 1:26:23 AM






---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com