[117167] in Cypherpunks
Re: a wee bit o' ultraparanoia
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sunder)
Fri Aug 27 15:25:03 1999
Message-ID: <37C6E146.5C856266@brainlink.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 15:04:38 -0400
From: Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
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CC: cypherpunks@toad.com
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Reply-To: Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
Anonymous wrote:
> Gents,
> if you have a bit-carrier which is trusted (e.g., a floppy or an iButton
> ring) then you can
> verify other pieces of code, and bootstrap yourself into a fully verified OS.
No you cannot. Your OS may be very fine and verified, but if I M SPOOK, I
have lots of money and I can build my own chips, 'cause I've got my own fabs.
Trust your OS all you want, I can bug the hardware to do whatever I want it to
and you won't know any better.
Are you really able to verify that the scurrilous P3 450 in your desktop is
really a P3 450 from swINeTEL and not one that has a second processor with
it's own ram, os and radio beacon from your secure OS?
Are you really able to verify that the keyboard you type on isn't bugged?
Are you really able to verify that there isn't a camera above you in the
ceiling tiles watching what you type on that keyboard?
Are you really able to verify that every packet, every radio frequency, every
write to the disk is what you want it to be and not spook food?
If you can't trust the hardware, you can't trust the OS, and no, you can't use
the OS to test the hardware.
> If you don't trust prefabbed hardware, buy a PLD and configure your own.
That's a hell of a task for a single person. :)
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