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Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor?

From Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk>
Newsgroups sci.electronics.design
Subject Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor?
Date 2018-10-05 23:44 +0100
Organization Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID <pp8pg7$1ndi$1@gioia.aioe.org> (permalink)
References <WnxtD.55769$6y.40842@fx09.iad> <zpz*fdE7w@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> <pp83rj$3um$1@dont-email.me> <Bpz*TcF7w@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> <c18d12de-b30e-447b-936b-d34fa4bf1ac9@googlegroups.com>

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On 10/05/18 22:19, gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, October 5, 2018 at 3:59:58 PM UTC-4, Theo wrote:
>> In comp.arch.embedded Rob Gaddi<rgaddi@highlandtechnology.invalid>  wrote:
>>> Thanks for that write-up, but why do you find it more feasible that the
>>> firmware's being fetched across the network than that the interceptor
>>> chip simply has 32Mb of flash on it?  It seems like that additional
>>> network traffic at boot time would be a pretty recognizable signature.
>>
>> It is possible that the implant is simply replacing the existing QSPI flash,
>> but then a firmware update would either replace it, or the update checksum
>> would fail.  So it has to be something that keeps the original flash
>> functioning and tampers with it conditionally.
>>
>> A regular SPI flash chip couldn't that.  A very basic flash edit (overdrive
>> the real data lines and force some bytes of config settings) could be done
>> in a CPLD - I didn't check what die sizes vendors have, but they can be
>> small.  An FPGA would likely be too big.
>>
>> A full custom chip is also feasible, but in another league in terms of
>> costs.
>
> It's a bit pedantic, but your distinction between CPLD and FPGA is not valid, in fact there are very few CPLDs left on the market because they are not very competitive with FPGAs even on die size.  Both types of devices waste a lot of real estate.  CPLDs use large arrays to implement the local interconnect with a complete matrix.  Larger CPLDs become disproportionately large.
>
> FPGAs use a mix of interconnect to try to find an optimal solution to the interconnect problem, but it is a somewhat intractable problem so a lot of real estate is still wasted trying to provide speed optimal solutions.  All in all even in smaller PLD designs the FPGA architecture is usually used.  There are several FPGAs with only 256 LUT-FFS in the chip and are very small sizes.  They are always size limited by the need for I/O pads.
>
> In this case, a 6 pin package with at most 4 I/Os, an FPGA could be built that was very small indeed, but still very functional.
>
> Still, I expect it is a fully custom chip with an MCU, neither FPGA or CPLD.  Did I miss something in the article?
>
> BTW, if the chip has sufficient internal capacitance, it is possible to have five I/Os by scavenging power from the I/Os.
>
> Rick C.

One article I read suggested that such a device would not even need
to be visible on the board, but could mounted on one of the internal
pcb layers.

Perhaps they already are, but companies need to be very wary of what 
they farm out for manufacturing overseas, especially
considering that state level actors have essentially unlimited
resources to engineer and hide such hardware hacks...

Chris

Chris

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Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-05 09:29 +1000
  Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2018-10-05 01:14 +0100
  Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-04 19:31 -0700
  Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jan Panteltje <pNaOnStPeAlMtje@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-05 07:27 +0000
    Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Gene Filatov <evgeny.filatov@ieee.org> - 2018-10-05 11:12 +0300
      Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jan Panteltje <pNaOnStPeAlMtje@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-05 08:41 +0000
  Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Theo Markettos <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-10-05 16:28 +0100
    Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Rob Gaddi <rgaddi@highlandtechnology.invalid> - 2018-10-05 09:34 -0700
      Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2018-10-05 20:59 +0100
        Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-05 14:19 -0700
          Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2018-10-05 23:44 +0100
            Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-06 09:58 +1000
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Steve Wilson <no@spam.com> - 2018-10-06 00:39 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-06 12:50 +1000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-06 08:42 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-06 21:41 +1000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-06 14:59 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2018-10-06 09:10 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-06 16:44 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-06 16:46 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 19:34 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Rob <nomail@example.com> - 2018-10-06 13:46 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 05:12 -0700
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 04:36 -0700
            Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> - 2018-10-06 14:50 -0400
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 19:43 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> - 2018-10-08 13:58 -0400
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-08 20:04 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-09 07:03 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2018-10-09 12:13 +0100
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-09 22:52 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-10 10:06 +1100
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-10 19:06 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-10 18:43 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-11 12:16 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Gerhard Hoffmann <ghf@hoffmann-hochfrequenz.de> - 2018-10-11 14:50 +0200
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-11 13:51 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-11 08:35 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-11 15:56 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-11 13:24 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-11 21:24 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-11 20:43 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-12 07:38 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-12 08:55 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-12 16:48 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-12 10:22 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-12 16:49 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-12 16:53 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-12 10:27 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-12 23:46 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-12 17:10 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-13 02:13 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-12 22:29 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-13 09:14 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? +++ATH0 <news@ringpiece.local> - 2018-10-13 14:29 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2018-10-15 16:27 +0100
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-11 08:28 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-11 08:27 -0700
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-10 10:04 +1100
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? pcdhobbs@gmail.com - 2018-10-10 06:47 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-10 19:01 -0700
          Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? <698839253X6D445TD@nospam.org> - 2018-10-06 06:03 +0000
            Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 05:17 -0700
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? <698839253X6D445TD@nospam.org> - 2018-10-06 15:38 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 19:14 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? <698839253X6D445TD@nospam.org> - 2018-10-07 07:15 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-07 08:13 -0700
          Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? <698839253X6D445TD@nospam.org> - 2018-10-20 07:07 +0000
    Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2018-10-05 20:12 -0700
      Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-06 13:42 +1000
        Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2018-10-05 21:02 -0700
        Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? <698839253X6D445TD@nospam.org> - 2018-10-06 06:03 +0000
      Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-06 08:45 +0000
        Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2018-10-06 08:51 -0700
          Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-06 16:42 +0000
            Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2018-10-06 19:55 +0300
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2018-10-06 19:29 +0100
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DLUNU <DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@DLU.org> - 2018-10-06 22:41 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2018-10-07 02:07 +0300
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2018-10-07 11:56 +1100
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 20:06 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2018-10-07 03:46 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 22:04 -0700
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DLUNU <DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@DLU.org> - 2018-10-06 22:40 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2018-10-07 02:05 +0300
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2018-10-07 01:36 +0100
            Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2018-10-06 20:14 -0700
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2018-10-07 08:07 +0100
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DLUNU <DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@DLU.org> - 2018-10-07 14:09 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2018-10-07 08:55 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-08 00:50 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-08 00:51 +0000
          Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-06 19:23 -0700
            Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DLUNU <DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@DLU.org> - 2018-10-07 13:52 +0000
              Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-07 08:18 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-08 00:52 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-08 00:54 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-07 22:20 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-08 08:20 +0000
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Cows are Nice <nice@cows.moo> - 2018-10-08 08:19 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2018-10-08 10:30 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com - 2018-10-08 19:57 -0700
                Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-09 06:51 +0000
      Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org - 2018-10-06 08:50 +0000
  Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? jurb6006@gmail.com - 2018-10-11 07:14 -0700
  Re: Supermicro server motherboards with hardware backdoor? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2018-10-12 08:21 +0200

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