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Sure, but if you’re defending against a nation state actor hopefully you aren’t expecting a raspberry pi to keep you secure.

by palmotea14 hours ago|

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> Sure, but if you’re defending against a nation state actor hopefully you aren’t expecting a raspberry pi to keep you secure.

Is there anything about these techniques that are raspberry pi specific? It seems like they're using lasers to identify and flip particular bits in registers.

by bob102914 hours ago|

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There are HSMs that are effectively immune to this attack by way of their construction and packaging. You need an optical path to the secure device. The only way to get at this is to tamper with the tamperproof part of the system.

Some very high end HSMs must be actively powered at all times which makes disturbances in their local environments detectable at all times as well. Getting lucky and drilling through a part of the enclosure that isn't directly protected won't help you if a barometric pressure sensor is tripped as a consequence of breaking the hermetic seal.

by yndoendo12 hours ago|

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It sounds like a more cleaner method to obtain the keys versus using solvents and a lot of trial and error hardware. As described by Chris Gerlinsky with "How Do I Crack Satellite and Cable Pay TV?" [0] [1]

[0] https://simkl.com/tv/33956/chaos-communication-congress/seas...

[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8127-how_do_i_crack_satellite_an...

by palmotea14 hours ago|

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> Getting lucky and drilling through a part of the enclosure that isn't directly protected won't help you if a barometric pressure sensor is tripped as a consequence of breaking the hermetic seal.

That's interesting. I suppose if that technology is in use, the attack would have to occur in a pressure-controlled chamber, so breaking the seal wouldn't cause a change in pressure.

by MayeulC13 hours ago|

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A more likely measure, which I recall seeing years ago, is to measure the impedance of the enclosure of the thing you want to protect. If someone tampers with it, you would be alerted. It works at many scales, from a protective metal mesh over your IC to a PC case.

by rcxdude13 hours ago|

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And you'd need to have a way to know what the pressure inside is beforehand.

by overfeed13 hours ago|

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You can find the pressure through destructive trial-and-error if money is no object - which it isn't for governments when the target hardware is juicy.

by rcxdude9 hours ago|

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Why would you make each device have the same pressure inside it? That's a bit like hardcoding the same password in each one. Any attacker is only going to have one shot on the actual device they care about no matter how much money they spend.

by pixl9710 hours ago|

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Really sounds very very easy for any lab that can measure molecular levels of gas.

Even a very sensitive pressure checker in a temp controlled sealed box would do it.

by bigiain6 hours ago|

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Your phone isn't going to have a "very high end HSM" any time soon. n Not until you're paying mid range car prices or more for your very specialised secure phone (and then that phone will probably be factory backdoored AN0M-style).

by stickfigure13 hours ago|

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Are any of these tamper-proof chips in my phone or laptop?

by throwaway8152312 hours ago|

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I expect typical smart cards like the one in your credit card are harder to crack than the raspberry pi was. Those cards are (or were) also used in TV set-top boxes and back in the day, there was a decades-long arms race between the chip makers and cable TV pirates. The TV pirates were also willing to make large expenditures to crack the chips so they could clone them and sell the clones. There's more about this in Ross Anderson's book "Security Engineering".

by ironqcold11 hours ago|

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I’m actually curious now. Thanks, you’ve given me something to do this evening.

by bigiain6 hours ago|

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Same. I wonder if my Yubikeys have anything to mitigate this sort of attack. My gut feel says that at their pricepoint and form factor, probably not.

by throwaway815239 hours ago|

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I've also heard that the Google Titan security enclave chip (used in Pixel phones) is very hard to crack. Apple has something similar for Iphones, I believe.

by EvanAnderson13 hours ago|

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> You need an optical path to the secure device.

Any path can be made into an optical path with a bright enough light. >smile<

by 12 hours ago|

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deleted

by ssl-314 hours ago|

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The RP2350 is an inexpensive microcontroller IC with reasonable performance and some very useful (and somewhat unusual) features in its PIO blocks.

Why wouldn't a person build that into the heart of something important?

by sephamorr14 hours ago|

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"Important" and "tamper proof against a determined adversary" are very different goals.

by jacquesm11 hours ago|

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Tamper proof against a determined adversary starts at 'call us' not at '$10'.

by alnwlsn12 hours ago|

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Depending on what sort of important you're talking, those ICs don't have the usual "something important" environmental specs, like an extended temperature range, or certification for automotive use or safety critical applications, for one thing.

by stackghost13 hours ago|

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>Why wouldn't a person build that into the heart of something important?

Because it's inexpensive and not designed to be tamper-resistant. If preventing this type of thing is your goal there are chips out there designed to break irrepairably if tampered with.

by rcxdude13 hours ago|

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Rp2350s are advertised as having quite a few anti-tamper functions. They had a bounty when it launched to find similar vulnerabilities and they worked to patch the ones that were found. This is a lot more credible than a lot of advertised anti-tamper features.