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A comment on Show HN: The SC4-HSM, a fully open USB hardware secure module. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: The SC4-HSM, a fully open USB hardware secure mo... by captainmuon on Friday July 08, 2016 @12:59PM (#12056949)
Well, that's probably true, but my only source for that is what people wrote on the internet. OTOH, I know e.g. the NSA has basically infinite resources.

Anecdotally, I've heard that there are ways to destructively image complete chips, and not just the layout but also the internal charge state. I believe the technique used femtosecond lasers. Of course that is also hearsay and I can't validate it.

My point is, as an interested layman, I don't know enough to trust this technology with my life - but it would be exactly useful if my life depended on keeping my secrets. So that contradiction kind of reduces its value for me.

I'm sure people with the required knowledge can properly evaluate these products, and for those people they are probably immensely useful.

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Re:Show HN: The SC4-HSM, a fully open USB hardware secure mo... by lisper on Friday July 08, 2016 @01:28PM (#12057200)
I would not bet my life savings against the NSA's ability to compromise the SC4-HSM if they had physical possession. On the other hand, there is a simple defense against physical compromise that would probably hold up even against the NSA: encrypt the keys with a strong pass phrase. That wouldn't hold up against a monkey wrench attack (https://xkcd.com/538/), of course, but there are limits to what you can do for <$100.
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Re:Show HN: The SC4-HSM, a fully open USB hardware secure mo... by hellomoto998 on Monday July 11, 2016 @09:03AM (#12070725)
Infinite resources don't exist.

Something I was told back when I was working around WikiLeaks is, "You can't make it impossible for them to get your goat, but you want to make it very, very expensive."

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