[rb-general] Crowdfunded 8086 audit

Orians, Jeremiah (DTMB) OriansJ at michigan.gov
Mon Apr 1 12:39:41 CEST 2019


> Of course!  There will always be one more layer which we, to paraphrase the adage, trust but do not verify. 
Well verifying base physics and chemistry tends to get extremely expensive (Who was got a few billion for a particle accelerator?)

> The goal of the exercise is not to _extinguish_ the assumed-trustworthy base, but merely to reduce its size.
No point and reducing below Zero

> Ultimately, however, we _will_ need to audit the next layer as well, just to keep up with attacks.
Well auditing lithography masks is a bit of a problem, electron microscopes might be compromised; so I guess we need to limit ourselves to macro lithography

> I prophesy a vertical arms race down the rabbit hole, culminating in an Internet wherein "heisenbugs" will mean "bugs caused by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle".
Does apply with large enough features

> As you may have guessed, I'm not an expert on x86's ancestry — but I'm open to instructions.  If some other progenitor would be a better starting point, we'll re-plan to use that one.
A 6502 would be a better approach, I suggest we solve mass producing these first: https://monster6502.com/

> I know it's not a novel concept.  I was just saying that old, dusted, Web 1.0-ey concept will be separately useful here, in addition to the uses we already know of for it.
Well there are some well done bootstrapping from javascript projects out there; my personal favorite leverages javascript to simulate an IBM 5150; which runs Microsoft DOS; which runs QEMU; running DEC Alpha Linux; running VMware; running Windows Server 2012R2; using HyperV to bootstrap hello world.

> Of course it's possible.  The output of `date +%b\ %d` gives a complete explanation.
Adding export PS1="Login: " to one's .bashrc would be more effective

-Jeremiah


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