News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free s... by DarylZero on Saturday January 22, 2022 @10:09PM (#30043249)
You can still backdoor a FPGA in the style of Reflections on Trusting Trust... wait for known code to be installed into the FPGA and then patch it.
Re:The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free s... by marcan_42 on Saturday January 22, 2022 @10:17PM (#30043286)
"Known" is the key word. You can randomize an FPGA design's layout and synthesis details, and it is impractical to implement dynamic reverse engineering of the design in order to patch it (certainly in an undetectable way - that's more compute power you'd need than was available to begin with). That's the premise behind Precursor, that users can run their own randomized bitstream, not a shared build.