Comment by yalogin

2 years ago

This is an interesting idea. However what does open hardware mean? How can you prove that the design or architecture that was “opened” is actually what was built? What does the attestation even mean in this scenario?

9 comments

yalogin

Reply
kfreds  2 years ago

> what does open hardware mean?

Great question. Most hardware projects I've seen that market themselves as open source hardware provide the schematic and PCB design, but still use ICs that are proprietary. One of my companies, Tillitis, uses an FPGA as the main IC, and we provide the hardware design configured on the FPGA. Still, the FPGA itself is proprietary.

Another aspect to consider is whether you can audit and modify the design artefacts with open source tooling. If the schematics and PCB design is stored in a proprietary format I'd say that's slightly less open source hardware than if the format was KiCad EDA, which is open source. Similarly, in order to configure the HDL onto the FPGA, do you need to use 50 GB of proprietary Xilinx tooling, or can you use open tools for synthesis, place-and-route, and configuration? That also affects the level of openness in my opinion.

We can ask similar questions of open source software. People who run a Linux distribution typically don't compile packages themselves. If those packages are not reproducible from source, in what sense is the binary open source? It seems we consider it to be open source software because someone we trust claimed it was built from open source code.

  • threeseed  2 years ago

    And what attestation do you have that the FPGA isn't compromised.

    We can play this game all the way down.

    • kfreds  2 years ago

      You're right. It is very hard, if not impossible, to get absolute guarantees. Having said that, FPGAs can make supply chain attacks harder. See my other comments in this thread.

  • yalogin  2 years ago

    No, you trust the HW and so starting with secure boot you can get measurements cryptographically vouched for. That you can prove and verify.

    So at some point you have no option but to trust something/someone

dented42  2 years ago

This is my thought exactly. I really love the idea of open hardware, but I don’t see how it would protect against cover surveillance. What’s stopping a company/government/etc from adding surveillance to an open design? How would you determine that the hardware being used is identical to the open hardware design? You still ultimately have to trust that the organisations involved in manufacturing/assembling/installing/operating the hardware in question hasn’t done something nefarious. And that brings us back to square one.

  • mdhb  2 years ago

    This website in particular tends to get very upset and is all too happy to point out irrelevant counter examples every time I point this out but the actual ground truth of the matter here is that you aren’t going to find yourself on a US intel targeting list by accident and unless you are doing something incredibly stupid you can use Apple / Google cloud services without a second thought.

  • kfreds  2 years ago

    > How would you determine that the hardware being used is identical to the open hardware design?

    FPGAs can help with this. They allow you to inspect the HDL, synthesize it and configure it onto the FPGA chip yourself. The FPGA chip is still proprietary, but by using an FPGA you are making certain supply chain attacks harder.