Is there a chance smartcards have a backdoor? (was Re: Any future for the Crypto Stick?)

[Mark Schneider]

Am 08.12.2013 19:13, schrieb NdK:
> Why is everyone thinking 'BIOS' as backdoorable piece of sw? Why not the
> hard disk?
> http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack
>
> Just another piece to think of when building a secure system...
Excellent article! Thank you.

Writing firmware I meant every piece of code "for / inside" all involved 
hardware components and in particular with their own controllers (eg. 
keyboard, USB ...) and not only the BIOS of the motherboard.

Some backdoors can be hardcoded in  the hardware of controller chips 
(eg. network controller etc).
Sending a special sequence of data to them can turn them in the "debug 
or whatever" mode.

Hacking smartcards is more complicated but possible.

BTW: there is no video at:
http://achtbaan.nikhef.nl/events/OHM/video/d2-t1-13-20130801-2300-hard_disks_more_than_just_block_devices-sprite_tm.m4v

Kind regards, Mark

-- 
ms at it-infrastrukturen.org

http://rsync.it-infrastrukturen.org