[118063] in Cypherpunks
The "ECHELON" Chip
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gary Jeffers)
Sat Sep 18 17:40:25 1999
Message-ID: <19990918212028.52899.qmail@hotmail.com>
From: "Gary Jeffers" <jeffersgary@hotmail.com>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 16:20:27 CDT
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Reply-To: "Gary Jeffers" <jeffersgary@hotmail.com>
The "ECHELON" Chip
Postulates:
1. NSA CHIPPING: The NSA either already has or soon will have the
major cpu chip makers desiging in back doors to be opened by
signal strings over the Internet. This method is too elegant
and too cheap on a per target basis to pass up.
2. HARDWARE TRUMPS SOFTWARE.
Defintion:
Echelon chip: A mass produced and marketed consumer cpu
chip that has been designed with an NSA required back door.
Here is how I believe that the NSA will activate the Echelon
chips:
1. The NSA would use a signal string over the Internet that would
match a string designed into the chip.
2. An instruction set is triggered in the chip that might say:
copy the next 1k bytes received from the Internet to a specified
address in RAM memory. Then set the instruction processing
register(IP) to beginning of the write. Then start execution.
This expands the door. This may crash the computer during the
session after the installation, but this may be regarded as
acceptable operational overhead. Then again, the NSA may make
a good guess for most installations and not crash the computer.
With Microsoft Windows, it would not matter. Crashes are
normal :-)
3. The program in RAM then possibly writes the next 200k received
from the Internet to hard disk. The file written to hard disk
would be the full door.
4. The program in RAM would then "infect" the computer using the
same techniques as used by viruses. For instance, the boot
sector or command.com could be altered to activate the back
door. Then, in normal operation, the back door would be
activated.
Your computer would then be shared with the State.
According to recent Cypherpunks posts, it would not be that
hard for a chip worker to slip in a back door. Consider that a
covert agreement between the chip corporations and the NSA
could be much worse.
!!!!!!! REMEDIES ??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Does anybody have any idea how an "Enchelon" chip could be
countered? What if you had a Pentium III that you knew to be
back doored? Would there be anyway to "cage" it and still use it?
It might be necessary to encrypt input to the chip to stop the
signal string. Would that be possible and yet still have a func-
tional chip?
Possibly, you might want a second system for covert work. This
system would be simpler and would have weaker chips. It would
probably be used to do encryption on files before they were fed
to the main system. Would it be possible to use chips that would
be trustable for the second system?
THE NEED TO PROMOTE THE ECHELON CHIP IDEA
The NSA could dominate computing if no notice is taken of back
doored chips. However, since the surfacing of the world wide
deception with the Echelon encryption machine, the world is much
more receptive to the idea that the popular cpu chips may be back
doored.
There are very wealthy parties in the world who might have the
need and the ability to fabricate and/or certify batches of cpu
chips. Amoung these are States, large corporations, criminal syndicates, and
large voluntary associations.
With the promotion of the idea of the Echelon Chip, we could
notify and encourage these parties to take precautions. This might,
in turn, give us choices in avoiding back doored chips.
Yours Truly,
Gary Jeffers
BEAT STATE!!!
P.S. I started the term - "ECHELON Chip" :-)
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