How do you not feel embarrassed after typing that edit. The iPhone flair also gives it a special kind of irony. The timing of me finding this post 5 years later right when there's a discovery of the NSA backdoor in Apple A12-A16 chips is impeccable.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Unpopular take incoming:
The nsa backdoor is most likely in every arm thing. Also it’s probably a “western” power.
Companies don’t design microprocessors “from scratch”, they license functional units and include them. Either the backdoor was part of some part that was licensed for inclusion in a12-a16 or it’s part of a domestic spying program that apples not allowed to talk about and was directed to include.
Either way, if the details of that generation of chips are resolvable with sem, expect to hear about more arm chips with it in the future.
It’s most likely a western power because the people that found it are from kaspersky. It was being used against them.
If you read this post and got worried because you have an iPhone: the physical hardware vulnerability in question took a complex multi step process involving three vulnerabilities to even access. Update to ios 16.6 or higher to remove the three other vulnerabilities and remove the ability of that physical backdoor to be addressed.
If you’re worried that this means you should switch away from your phone asap: as I said above, there’s a good chance this affects many arm chips. If you already have a device that has been patched, consider sticking with the devil you know.
I doubt ARM's designs have backdoors in them, too many people can look at them. It is better to just put the backdoors in a level lower, especially because those companies, Qualcomm and Apple are American but ARM isn't.
I agree. Every Chinese chip maker will look at those design and revise them.
While it doesn’t matter if arm(r)’s designs have these specific bits in them because no one is using a basic straight off the rack arm chip, two other possibilities are that the backdoor was a debugging tool or added in by a contractor that’s a security cutout. Both are very possible.
Being able to input your secret code and bypass that pesky mmu would help in low level debugging and if you were a spook wanting to get your shit in a chip it’s a lot easier to hire the person contracted to design the chunks of silicon that get licensed than to actually get an agreement going with the company that’s putting it all together.