Unique locks on microchips could reduce hardware piracy
http://www.physorg.com/news123951684.html The technique is called EPIC, short for Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits. It relies on established cryptography methods and introduces subtle changes into the chip design process. But it does not affect the chips' performance or power consumption. There's also the paper: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~imarkov/pubs/conf/date08-epic.pdf Random number generators, public keys, remote attestation, oh my! There appears to be an assumption that a potential 'pirate' isn't inside the cryptographic boundary which includes the chip design and tools, fabrication process, and programming/testing facility. I'm not sure the vulnerability assessment includes all the threat models for gray market ICs. There seems to be a bit of hand waving involved. It may narrow the avenues available to the potential pirate. From the article: However, even in U.S. facilities, working chips are sometimes reported defective by individual employees and later sold in gray markets, Koushanfar said. By itself it doesn't stop silicon from being diverted after unlocking, for instance. I'd imagine the things you would do to increase threat coverage might be sufficient in and of themselves to preclude the need for this lock mechanism. An attack on the random number generator appears a likely vector. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Unique locks on microchips could reduce hardware piracy
David G. Koontz wrote: http://www.physorg.com/news123951684.html Two more articles: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-fighting-the-black-market-crypto-locks-for-cpus-other-ics.html This one has a bit of the technical description http://itnews.com.au/News/71553,chip-lock-aims-to-end-hardware-piracy.aspx This has some comments including: Ok, so ow the hardware has to 'phone home'; before it will work. does this mean that worldwide legitimate chip production has to halt every time the patent holder has a server failure? secondly, if someone has the capability of turning design documents into working silicon, they also have the capability to make changes to the design. what's to stop them from simply removing the lock circuitry from the design before making the chips? It seems to me that this DRM is like all other DRM. It causes problems for the legal users, and won't do anything to stop the illegal users. Posted by Kelly Gray, 8/03/2008 1:26:23 AM - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Unique locks on microchips could reduce hardware piracy
Two papers of interest in evaluating the paper http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~imarkov/pubs/conf/date08-epic.pdf EPIC: Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits Jarrod A. Roy?, Farinaz Koushanfar? and Igor L. Markov? ?The University of Michigan, Department of EECS, 2260 Hayward Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2121 ?Rice University, ECE and CS Departments, 6100 South Main, Houston, TX 77005 The two papers: http://www.usenix.org/events/sec07/tech/full_papers/alkabani/alkabani.pdf Active Hardware Metering for Intellectual Property Protection and Security Yousra M. Alkabani and Farinaz Koushanfar, Rice University http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/133/1326215/p674-alkabani.pdf?key1=1326215key2=5023225021coll=dl=GUIDECFID=15151515CFTOKEN=6184618 Remote Activation of ICs for Piracy Prevention and Digital Right Management Yousra Alkabani Computer Science Dept., Rice University Farinaz Koushanfar Electrical Computer Engineering and Computer Science Depts., Rice University Miodrag Potkonjak Computer Science Dept., University of California, Los Angeles - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
