[107708] in Cypherpunks
Re: Trojan Processors (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Missouri FreeNet Administration)
Thu Jan 21 17:03:06 1999
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 15:42:01 -0600 (CST)
From: Missouri FreeNet Administration <measl@mfn.org>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Missouri FreeNet Administration <measl@mfn.org>
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Markus Kuhn wrote:
:
:I have even better ideas, what a Trojan CPU manufacturer might want to
:put into his hardware: Pentium and friends have all string copy machine
:instructions. Add a tiny (LFSR) substring detection hardware to this,
:and trigger an "interesting" effect once a specific rare substring is
:processed. This could be the slow death of the processor within the next
:30 minutes,
I assume you are referring to, or are familiar with, the HCF (Halt and
Catch Fire) instruction in the first round of MILSPEC 6800 processors
produced back in the '70's???
;-)
:I believe that hidden substring matchers in CPUs are the most dangerous
:form of Trojan circuitry.
While not betting on what the worst scenario might be, this certainly does
rank right up there. IIRC, Ft. Monmouth was seriously discussing this
type of thing back in 1987. I seem to remember a Battelle RFP on it
actually...
:Markus
:Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
:Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
Yours,
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin@mfn.org
--
If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they
should give serious consideration towards setting a better example:
Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of
unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in
the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and
elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire
populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate...
This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States
as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers,
associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of
those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the
first place...
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