On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 09:47:30AM -0700, Seth wrote:
On Tue, 09 Jun 2015 21:03:09 -0700, Christian Gagneraud <chgans@gna.org> wrote:
BTW, every single CPU on this planet has a JTAG[1] port (or equivalent), so with physical access to the hardware you can install persistent backdoor on virtually any CPU/GPU/MCU/RAM/ROM/FPGA/CPLD/DSP/...,
I trust that includes the Freescale chip used by the Novena hardware? [1] Any way for a hardware manufacturer to shave that bitch down so it can't be used by an implant?
Xray your novena. Compare it to Bunniestudios pgp-signed xray images. Removing the jtag is like welding your hood shut because you're worried about cops tracking you. It pisses off your mechanic and doesn't do anything about the cell phone that's already tracking you. Jtag is incredibly usefull stuff if you are a hardware geek or a kernel and you want to debug why your laptop crashed. If you actually want to make the Novena more secure, start reverse engineering a full-open source toolchain to program the Xilinx FPGA, which is the most likely target for implants, cause we have to use the crappy xilinx tools to program it.