Hardware Backdoors

This cluster focuses on concerns about backdoors, implants, and compromises in computer hardware and firmware, emphasizing that untrusted hardware cannot be secured by software alone due to supply chain risks and detection difficulties.

📉 Falling 0.4x Security
4,580
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#9859
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

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Keywords

TrustZone e.g CPU ARM SPI youtube.com PC RAID SOMEONE ROM hardware firmware compromised backdoors secure boot secure boot backdoor intel trust

Sample Comments

astrange May 31, 2023 View on HN

Not good enough, your hardware has to be secure too or they can leave an implant in any of various firmwares.

fsflover Mar 23, 2022 View on HN

Can't hardware have backdoors? How about the firmware?

adrianN Jul 11, 2017 View on HN

You can't run trusted software on untrusted hardware. If someone has a backdoor in your ME, you can't protect yourself from it.

Engineering-MD Sep 5, 2021 View on HN

It is the potential of hardware compromise that concerns me. Software can be wiped, but if the hardware itself contains backdoors, software can then be install at any time. Furthermore, given the global supply system, its so hard to confirm that any hardware is not compromised.

snarfy Oct 14, 2018 View on HN

Where is the hardware? I call bullshit until someone produces compromised hardware.

viraptor May 1, 2010 View on HN

tl;dr - Nothing is secure. Even Intel's specially designed Trusted Execution Technology (close to the Trusted Platform idea) has known flaws. You can be hacked at levels which you cannot control (firmware). It's tricky (not a script-kiddie level exploit), but possible and many existing holes are not published/known, because researchers would rather do something interesting than uncover yet another bug using the same technique. If you have government-level influence, start complaining to Intel (e

wpdev_63 Aug 17, 2018 View on HN

It's not secure if the hardware compromised. Not much is.

zhengyi13 Aug 27, 2020 View on HN

Threat model again: what if you're concerned that they themselves are unaware their hardware's been compromised?

tokenizerrr Mar 11, 2017 View on HN

It can always be tampered with if you have access to the hardware

returnInfinity Jan 13, 2025 View on HN

possible the hardware is compromised