this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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If you wanna skip a few inconvenient instructions in X86 assembly, throw a few No Operation instructions in the right places.
NOP = 0x90
And so you add a hashing check. But then that can be removed.
So you need one in the OS but that can be removed.
So you need one in hardware.
In other words no matter how clever you are there’s always a way to monkey with something unless you have absolute control from silicon on up.
Here’s a really interesting video the Xbox team did on the challenges of trying to make sure that the content running wasn’t pirated.
https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo
While DRM is the bane of everybody there are cases where trust and integrity is important and it’s an intriguing look into how hard it is to manage.
Nah, when the user wants to ensure trust and integrity in his own system, it works just fine. The problem comes when the user who needs to be able to access the data is simultaneously the adversary who needs to be stopped from accessing the data.
In other words, it's one of those situations where the fact that it's hard to manage is a gigantic clue that it's wrongheaded to try to do so in the first place.
I agree. I mean when doing secure channel communications or weapons systems or health biometrics.
There are cases where you need to be sure of the integrity of the data and environment