Re: Hackers hope to democratize laser-based processor hacking for $500

On 4/08/2024 11:05 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:

  https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/hackers-hope-to-democratize-laser-based-processor-hacking-dollar500-rayv-lite-relies-on-3d-printing-a-laser-pen-and-a-raspberry-pi-to-bring-costs-down#main

I actually worked on a electron-microscope based electron beam tester in the late 1980's.
We weren't proposing to offer EBIC - electron beam induced change - though we had on an earlier tester, and nobody had used it (probably because it can permanently mess up the chip).
A laser-based microscope won't have the resolution to focus the beam on a specific transistor - and there were millions of transistors on the sort of chips we were expecting to test, even back then.
Electron microscopes do offer better image resolution. Optical lithography now depends on a 14 nanometer wavelength light source - a 300 nanometre wavelenght laser isn't in the hunt.
And we expected that our customers would have access to the chip layout and schematic so that they would be able to work out which transistor did what.
The hackers might well be able mess up the operation of the chips that they point their laser-beams at, but they won't be able to do it in any kind of systematic way.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
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