In 5 years, either $400,000 or $50 and a hammer, depending on whether the core piece of the process aligns with the needs of some fast-growing consumer tech product like e.g. drones.
250k is not a bad investment for a company doing "reverse engineering as a service" - say 1k a pop to extract the firmware. Naturally, a good business idea for somewhere in the world with less regulations...
Why wouldn't a person build that into the heart of something important?
Because it's inexpensive and not designed to be tamper-resistant. If preventing this type of thing is your goal there are chips out there designed to break irrepairably if tampered with.
Rp2350s are advertised as having quite a few anti-tamper functions. They had a bounty when it launched to find similar vulnerabilities and they worked to patch the ones that were found. This is a lot more credible than a lot of advertised anti-tamper features.
Sure, but if you’re defending against a nation state actor hopefully you aren’t expecting a raspberry pi to keep you secure.
Is there anything about these techniques that are raspberry pi specific? It seems like they're using lasers to identify and flip particular bits in registers.
There are HSMs that are effectively immune to this attack by way of their construction and packaging. You need an optical path to the secure device. The only way to get at this is to tamper with the tamperproof part of the system.
Some very high end HSMs must be actively powered at all times which makes disturbances in their local environments detectable at all times as well. Getting lucky and drilling through a part of the enclosure that isn't directly protected won't help you if a barometric pressure sensor is tripped as a consequence of breaking the hermetic seal.
Getting lucky and drilling through a part of the enclosure that isn't directly protected won't help you if a barometric pressure sensor is tripped as a consequence of breaking the hermetic seal.
That's interesting. I suppose if that technology is in use, the attack would have to occur in a pressure-controlled chamber, so breaking the seal wouldn't cause a change in pressure.
You can find the pressure through destructive trial-and-error if money is no object - which it isn't for governments when the target hardware is juicy.
A more likely measure, which I recall seeing years ago, is to measure the impedance of the enclosure of the thing you want to protect. If someone tampers with it, you would be alerted. It works at many scales, from a protective metal mesh over your IC to a PC case.
It needs to be updated. Modern evil planners don't even need a wrench since they already have most keys given to them in advance by everyone, including nerds
That's reminiscent of when we first found out that if you opened up dram chips you could use them for imaging. Of course the scale at which this is done is extremely impressive.
I appreciate all the details they provide in the post. The $250k in lab gear is useful when initially discovering, exploiting and documenting attacks like this.
Definitely doable in a home lab for under $25k in equipment, likely under $10k.
Same as my replicating Colin O’Flynn’s BAM BAM attack on a MPC5566 chip, he used a ChipShouter ($5,000) and I used a PicoEMP ($50).
The RP2350's secure enclave made it particularly attractive for use as a Yubikey alternative.
There will always be an arms race between safe-crackers and safe-builders. Presumably the lessons learned will help make the next generation tougher to break into.
Not super practical, but neat attack
*currently
$300,000 next year.
We're already up to 400,000 just today.
In 5 years, either $400,000 or $50 and a hammer, depending on whether the core piece of the process aligns with the needs of some fast-growing consumer tech product like e.g. drones.
I think GP was making a joke about RAM prices. Makes me wonder what is the effect of the RAMpocalypse on drone prices.
Some people have such and other toys just at work and can use it in spare time.
250k is not a bad investment for a company doing "reverse engineering as a service" - say 1k a pop to extract the firmware. Naturally, a good business idea for somewhere in the world with less regulations...
That is peanuts for a nation-state actor.
Sure, but if you’re defending against a nation state actor hopefully you aren’t expecting a raspberry pi to keep you secure.
The RP2350 is an inexpensive microcontroller IC with reasonable performance and some very useful (and somewhat unusual) features in its PIO blocks.
Why wouldn't a person build that into the heart of something important?
"Important" and "tamper proof against a determined adversary" are very different goals.
Because it's inexpensive and not designed to be tamper-resistant. If preventing this type of thing is your goal there are chips out there designed to break irrepairably if tampered with.
Rp2350s are advertised as having quite a few anti-tamper functions. They had a bounty when it launched to find similar vulnerabilities and they worked to patch the ones that were found. This is a lot more credible than a lot of advertised anti-tamper features.
Is there anything about these techniques that are raspberry pi specific? It seems like they're using lasers to identify and flip particular bits in registers.
There are HSMs that are effectively immune to this attack by way of their construction and packaging. You need an optical path to the secure device. The only way to get at this is to tamper with the tamperproof part of the system.
Some very high end HSMs must be actively powered at all times which makes disturbances in their local environments detectable at all times as well. Getting lucky and drilling through a part of the enclosure that isn't directly protected won't help you if a barometric pressure sensor is tripped as a consequence of breaking the hermetic seal.
That's interesting. I suppose if that technology is in use, the attack would have to occur in a pressure-controlled chamber, so breaking the seal wouldn't cause a change in pressure.
And you'd need to have a way to know what the pressure inside is beforehand.
You can find the pressure through destructive trial-and-error if money is no object - which it isn't for governments when the target hardware is juicy.
A more likely measure, which I recall seeing years ago, is to measure the impedance of the enclosure of the thing you want to protect. If someone tampers with it, you would be alerted. It works at many scales, from a protective metal mesh over your IC to a PC case.
Any path can be made into an optical path with a bright enough light. >smile<
It reads as impressive defense. Meaning that it's presumably not possible to get root with physical access on a live 50$ device without 250k capital
This is for a $1 microcontroller. I'm assuming you're talking about the Raspberry Pi computers based on the $50 cost and root.
There's always an XKCD... https://xkcd.com/538/
It needs to be updated. Modern evil planners don't even need a wrench since they already have most keys given to them in advance by everyone, including nerds
Care to expand?
That's reminiscent of when we first found out that if you opened up dram chips you could use them for imaging. Of course the scale at which this is done is extremely impressive.
For the curious: https://hackaday.com/2014/04/05/taking-pictures-with-a-dram-...
A lot earlier than that.
https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2007/fall/cs441/support/dram_sensor_1...
Now it can be done for Apple iPhone. Apple is cooked.
I appreciate all the details they provide in the post. The $250k in lab gear is useful when initially discovering, exploiting and documenting attacks like this.
Definitely doable in a home lab for under $25k in equipment, likely under $10k.
Same as my replicating Colin O’Flynn’s BAM BAM attack on a MPC5566 chip, he used a ChipShouter ($5,000) and I used a PicoEMP ($50).
https://youtu.be/URmI1VVilek
The RP2350's secure enclave made it particularly attractive for use as a Yubikey alternative.
There will always be an arms race between safe-crackers and safe-builders. Presumably the lessons learned will help make the next generation tougher to break into.