[Cryptography] ORWL - The First Open Source, Physically Secure Computer

[Tom Mitchell]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 7:14 AM, Allen <allenpmd at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1) Where are the open fabs where I can get a trusted processor design
>> fabricated, and at reasonable cost?
>> 2) Given the effectiveness of incredibly simple malicious hardware
>> additions, some of which are difficult to notice even with a careful
>> destructive analysis of the fabricated part, how can I verify that the
>> fabricated design is indeed what I expected and consistently so?
>>
>
> I wonder if one could build a low-performance, high-cost but secure
> processor from an FPGA?  It would seem on the surface to be more difficult
> to embed an exploit in an un-programmed FPGA, especially if it had a very
> regular structure.
>

Much depends on what you need but start with "Magic-1".
http://www.homebrewcpu.com/

One advantage is the compiler is also a near clean white page design.
The instruction set is minimum and only what the compiler needed (yes C
compiler).

Some FPGA versions out there might run faster.

The risk with the marvelous billion+ transistor processors is
the internals are secret and that is not likely to change.

The billion gate parts are here and fast.
Surrounding these parts are very large gate cont I/O and memory systems.
This landscape of hardware is not going to change if you want to go fast.

It seem like firewalls and old school programmable I/O channel tech
might be the current best turf for mortals.  Eight bit parts are less likely
to be abused today and the little guys could load FPGAs

Emulators are fast and worthy and make it easy to run the old PDP
operating systems and tools.   It is a unique target for hacking so some
levels of safety exists.

Virtual machines could be hacked but a bytecode  VM could have the
code randomized and all the interesting stuff rebuilt for exactly one
instance making the python or java VM at a CGI interface harder to hack.

Stack machines running FORTH are near simple to grock.

Lets not forget the Lilith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith_(computer)
AMD <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD> 2901
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Am2900> bit-slice
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit-slice> parts are hard to find but FPGA
libraries
could be built.

Emulators are inexpensive to start...
http://pascal.hansotten.com/?page=emulith





-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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