Re:How Intel Makes a Chip
by nickpsecurity on Saturday June 11, 2016 @06:42PM
(#11885726)
You should look at the Snowden leaks sometime. They had cooperation, including backdoors, in a large number of companies' products and networks. RSA cost them about $30 mil to risk whole market. For carriers, usually around $100 mil or so.
Also, remember that it's easier to do if you disguise it as a coding flaw. It wasn't a backdoor: just one among many flaws accidentally hitting our systems. Wouldn't cost any market share.
Re:How Intel Makes a Chip
by CyberDildonics on Saturday June 11, 2016 @07:17PM
(#11885851)
I think it would be something more like:
NSA: Please backdoor all sorts of stuf Intel: ok
Security Researcher: these chips have backdoors
Intel: Maybe they do, what are you going to do about it?
Intel has plausible deniability. A backdoor in RDRAND would be some very minor statistical flaw. It could just be something tiny that makes private keys susceptible to some known or unknown attack.
Doesn't matter still a recall will be called for.
Imagine the potential conversation between Intel and the NSA:
NSA: Please backdoor your RNG for us. Intel: We're making xx billions of this chip. What happens if someone finds out and we have to recall the chip. Are you paying us the xx billions back then? NSA: ...
It is fairly unlikely the NSA could afford Intel.