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Microchips With Multiple "Selves"

Posted by Soulskill on from the sounds-like-a-support-nightmare dept.

Stony Stevenson brings news from Rice University about designing integrated circuits with multiple distinct identities, which could be used in new types of hardware-based DRM, among other things. From the news release: "'With "n-variant" integrated circuits, it is possible to design portable media players that are inherently unique,' said Farinaz Koushanfar, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice and principal investigator on the project. 'New methods of digital rights management can be built upon such devices. For example, media files can be made such that they only run on a certain variant and cannot be played by another.' Koushanfar said content providers could also use n-variant chips to sell metered access to software, music or movies because the chips can be programmed to switch from one variant to another at a particular time or after a file has been accessed a certain number of times."

2 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, a system whereby every installation is also a port to a unique platform. I think this deserves a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong".

    I suspect that I don't fully understand the proposal; but I'm a bit unclear as to how this is better(or worse, if you are not a sinister IP overlord) than a TPM with an embedded key, or the obfuscated VM from BD+. I'd also be very curious to know how one can, easily enough to use on a commercial scale, generate "content" or binaries for a given unknown unique architecture. Is there some sort of compact way that the chip can send its state to a remote agent(without revealing that state, and making reverse engineering easy)? Does the manufacturer of the device need to disclose the state of all devices to all vendors in order for them to build customized binaries for those devices?

    I suspect that people smarter than I am have given the matter some thought; but TFA doesn't give me much to go on.

  2. Why always media? by bitflip · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With the way identity theft and misplaced data is being trumpeted in the media, I feel influenced to ask for something that will protect my data from them.

    Can this chip do that?