[Cryptography] TRNGs as open source design semiconductors

[Bill Frantz]

On 9/12/19 at 7:35 AM, leichter at lrw.com (Jerry Leichter) wrote:

>Perhaps the NSA can, for relatively limited numbers of chips 
>that it can build in its own "black" fabs.  For some kinds of 
>uses - a sealed box between a computer and a network that 
>manages all the encryption - it's possible, certainly with NSA 
>levels of funding, to ensure that the stuff that traverses the 
>wire can't be attacked.  But once the decrypted data is 
>delivered to a general-purpose computer with "modern" levels of 
>performance, the story is very different.  (The same goes, for 
>example, to all kinds of modern sensors, which contain quite a 
>bit of computation within them, massaging the data before your 
>"secure" machine ever sees it.)

It's not just NSA. Remember, old technology fabs are now the 
stuff of home experimenters. I know one person who has a chip 
fab in her kitchen. (I don't know what her SO thinks of this, 
but they seem to get along just fine with each other.)

I have also read about another experimenter with a similar setup.

Her problem is that her kitchen isn't a clean room, but I bet 
she gets enough usable chips to let her solve this kind of 
problem for herself.

Indeed, Jerry is completely correct. When the data gets to a 
modern computer, it's toast.

Cheers - Bill

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Bill Frantz        | Re IOT: "How many access control systems 
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