Re:A simple, (as-of-yet unidentified) asymmetric Authenticat...
by mike_d on Thursday March 28, 2024 @04:46AM
(#39848933)
> Is the device hackable? AFAIK not at this moment. The firmware is minimal. It is a relatively new device
It is just a package around an inexpensive FPGA chip. Published and un-published attacks against it exist. For these reasons the TKey developers call out "[a]ll physical and electrical attacks applied to the board [are out of scope]" in the threat model.
https://hackaday.com/2018/09/27/three-part-deep-dive-explain...
https://github.com/sylefeb/Silice/blob/draft/projects/ice40-...
> There are protections against opening it up.
I'd love to see photos if yours is any different than what is on the website.
- Is the device hackable? AFAIK not at this moment. The firmware is minimal. It is a relatively new device, so maybe I am not fully informed.
- Is the device stealable/swappable? Yes. However, it isn't possible/easy to access the internal device-secret (UDS) therefore, swapping it out leads to different secret for the program, cascading into the identity, therefore authentication would fail. (Also, if you steal it, then it's gone. :-P)
- There are protections against opening it up. I'm not an expert on this, so I cannot reliably reproduce from memory the ways it is resistant to this. However, it already means your destroying hardware in the process.