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From: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>
Subject: Re: Trusting GNAT for security software
Date: 1998/03/02
Date: 1998-03-02T00:00:00+00:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <m3btvp1zo2.fsf@fred.muc.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 1998Mar1.142220.1@eisner


kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

> > Actually I think a university project, particularly one working with
> > openly available sources, would be extremely hard to subvert in the manner
> > that Marcus' paranoid thinking suggests. Many students had full access to
> > every bit of information throughtout the development.
> 
> But those involved in security work are supposed to think paranoid.
> If you don't have a list of possible attacks against which you do not
> have a provable defense, then you haven't thought hard enough.  AMD
> might have a special circuit inside their chips that recognizes code
> generated by GNAT and if it finds it is doing triple-DES squirrels
> away the key in a secret register.

Another funny thing. Most newer Intel chips (PPro+) are rumoured to have
loadable Microcode [SCO apparently once released a OS update that fixed
microcode bugs]. Now you could patch the microcode to detect some known
codes...

-Andi 




  parent reply	other threads:[~1998-03-02  0:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
1998-02-25  0:00 Compiling gnat into gcc-2.8.0 Kevin Taylor
1998-02-26  0:00 ` Simon Wright
1998-02-26  0:00   ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-26  0:00 ` Stephen Leake
1998-02-26  0:00   ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-27  0:00   ` Markus Kuhn
1998-02-27  0:00     ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-27  0:00       ` Andi Kleen
1998-02-27  0:00         ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-02-27  0:00           ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-27  0:00     ` Richard Kenner
1998-03-01  0:00       ` Trusting GNAT for security software Markus Kuhn
1998-03-01  0:00         ` Robert Dewar
1998-03-01  0:00           ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-03-01  0:00             ` Robert Dewar
1998-03-02  0:00               ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-03-02  0:00             ` Andi Kleen [this message]
1998-03-02  0:00               ` Larry Kilgallen
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