This speaks to hardware trojans, so SAFE isn’t necessarily a straight solution. A while back we had another article where there was as suspected trojan or hack or serious vulnerability in a mainstream Intel firmware if I am not mistaken. But SAFE represents a movement. We need hardware that we can print out ourselves and verify ourselves physically with the use of proper tools.
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This has been bothering me for years. I remember a long time ago reading that Intel, and others, put backdoors in their hardware. I thought it was back in the late 90s, but I don’t really remember. I had hoped that the ever increasing value of CCs might lead to some sort of DIY processor.
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Yeah DIY processors … One can use abacus but it’s slow.
Decentralized chip design (and manufacture) won’t happen anytime soon.
If one wants to stay completel y safe from Internet threats, compromises are required. Such as, don’t go online.
If Apple were to make these secure servers, and if there were really secure, many would still find some reason to complain (eg bloated price, regardless of the cost).
Manufacturing is extremely centralized (huge fabs in China, basically), but I doubt they could alter the design at that phase.
Design, on the other hand (and that’s the part that matters) is very decentralized (countless contractors, libraries, etc), so nobody really knows (i.e. checked detail by detail) what’s in the box (your latest Intel CPU, for example, or your mobile’s SOC), not necessarily because they don’t want to, but because it would be a daunting (i.e. expensive and time consuming) task.
Hardware is written like software (with different restrictions), so it’s not much harder for a contractor to hide a backdoor somewhere if they get paid by the NSA / Mosad / Beijing / your grandma.
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Yes hardware at the design level is the piece of software that is by this logic most easily compromised. You build the compromise into the silicone compiler and the designs its used on inherit the backdoors.
Right now we (US) have people like Lindsey Graham in our media salivating over perptrating another 911. This time we need to catch them in the act and distribute the evidence in real time, or better yet have enough secure accessible crypto in place that they are afraid to act. Right now it seems like they want to force the issue and likely snuff out opposition when the smoke is settling like last time. But there is no shock and awe here because there is no surprise this time. They have a closed corporate loud speaker media, a rigged election with lunatic or psychopathic neocons advising on both sides and the media is already playing their insane tune. As far as tic toc, its like the neocons think they are entitled to a toc instead of prison. They’ve also been loading their military gun.
Scalia goes lights out and Eric Prince is facing prosecution these may not be coincidences the battle to steal the election and install lunatics is on right now. Something worse than 911 then on to Iran at the risk of WW3 all to distract from theft legalized tax evasion and to shore up “you work so we don’t have” to scams like the saving the obsolete petro industry. They would probably need something much worse like setting off a nuke in the US and saying Iran did it. Part of the cover for 911 was the cognitive dissonance on the betrayal, the larger the betrayal the more dissonant cover they think they get.
The time to stop them is now. The outgoing admin has to do it in part. This may be part of why Obama is saying he may take the launch codes and football with him and why he is releasing the record of US abuse of Argentina, and going after Prince and granting the Hillary email manager immunity and allowing her potentially disqualifying case to go forward.