A Japanese-based multinational made a CD-based console once
weaponre.com
weaponre.com
To OP, those devices are not cheap - they run $22k from SafeNet (dependent on what model, obviously). In addition, FIPS criteria is meant to be tamper evident (not tamper resistant). SafeNet does require a special key to recover after a tamper attempt, though: http://goo.gl/RyVtFj
Credit card readers get scored on how hard they are to attack, and pass above some threshold based on difficulty of attack and time taken.
Level 3 wouldn't be a problem, that's tamper evident really. Nothing is tamper-proof for an attacker with physical access, resources and time. You're looking at Level 4 for even any kind of real serious roadblock, but even then...
I like how he's trying to avoid too much jargon, and really getting people to understand the subject, instead of showing off with his knowledge, which is all too common.
One of the biggest barriers to learning about reverse engineering is fear of the expense of breaking the system you are working on. Being afraid of breakage makes one's exploration timid. In buying a system specifically for the purpose, you've removed the major barrier.
Pulling something apart and figuring out how it works has to be the best way to learn about engineering. Every child (and curious adult) should do it, with children having the advantage of all the time in the world to do things. As you pull lots of things apart, you begin to learn about the full spectrum of current engineering techniques, eventually ending up with the knowledge to design your own stuff.
It would be cool if there was a "Wikipedia" of reverse engineering, whereby every consumer item out there has a web of articles, and an army of the curious has fun by stripping devices down and collaboratively documenting innards to the lowest level possible. It would be extra cool if the community extended to a means of obtaining broken reverse engineering targets, that would otherwise be thrown away, or a way of spreading the cost of purchasing sacrificial devices.
Such an effort would directly feed into Free Software efforts, by providing the knowledge required to rewrite replacement software, from scratch, for the devices in our lives. (For example, Free Software for your phone's modem processor, your washing machine, your fridge, your TV, ...?) Free Software for consumer appliances will come into prominence as every appliance in our lives, and their associated sensors, joins the "Internet Of Things".
I also remind my friends to avoid Sony for their involvement in SOPA/PIPA/rootkits
> Google is your friend here
and then you find people who do writeups consisting of "And I'm gonna skip over this part, since if you don't know how to do it, you shouldn't be doing it", or "I reverse engineered X, but I'm not going to tell anyone because it would be bad if this was widespread"
(though, my personal focuses were more towards specific games (though not for uncompetitive advantage sake, the tools resulting from the RE mentioned are public n' stuff, and known by the devs for a long time now))
one of the tools was in python so it was easy enough to decompile that, but it still doesn't teach thought process or methods for finding relevant items in the code (like hooking into a function that processes in game market data so it can be saved to a text file)
Not to be too shameless, but I was excited to see someone else explicate the idea. A few buddies and I are building a platform for precisely that[1]. Images can be annotated with hover-over notes with linked components, and it is possible to search for things by component (ex. c:msp430). We have also been bringing e-waste to Maker Faires to give kids the opportunity to get comfortable disassembling things and identifying components and basic engineering concepts.
It is also not clear to me how you want to earn money from this service. Therefore, I would hesitate to put my content on your site without knowing whether it will still be online in a few years, and how you will monetize my contribution.
The lack of open licensing options (Creative Commons, GNU FDL, whatever) and obvious export formats immediately put me off. I would guess a large part of your target demographic (of content creators) would be hesitant to put hard work into content that is not freely shareable and modifiable.
Given the focus of your site, this is also an interesting requirement in the TOS:
> [You agree] Not to decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any of our software or Site;
As for the TOS clause, that's standard legal protection. The terms also explicitly permit derivative works within the site. We're evaluating open licenses for the future, but for now it is easier to let content owners retain copyright.
This is a great presentation showing how this CPU is reverse engineered: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWqBmmPQP40
Basically it comes down to the fact that you can't really hide transistors and ultimately that's something you can reconstruct. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but if you do it you can perfectly emulate a chip.
If you can dig out non volatile memory then potentially you have the firmware. Once someone has their hands on that it'll be broken, almost guaranteed, as it becomes a software problem. Lots of people are very good at assembly hacking.
At the hobbyist level, you'll be dealing with fumes from nitric acid to decap chips, and getting blurry, dirty scans that only give you a basic idea on function. Go back to '80s tech and before, and you'll possibly be able to painstakingly read NAND ROM sections by hand.
At the professional level, you'll be spending up to millions of dollars on the equipment necessary to do live probing of chips at this process scale. Here you'll be able to advance the clock on your own, probe and hijack address and data bus lines and log their data constantly.
On the extreme end of security, these chips are countless layers deep and have complicated wire mesh overlays that are used to detect intrusions and self-destruct. They can be beaten, but not by anything you can do with affordable hobbyist equipment.
Contact these guys for a quote; expect it to be at least five figures to work on a single chip.
Could anyone explain what the R8J32710 chip is?
I'm wondering what the data rate of bits across the bonding wires would be.
Three guesses why you might want to look inside one of those...
It might be die-on-die packaged memory or something else part of the original, but I'd like to know what it is.
Plus it's good advertising for their firm, assuming they don't get sued or anything.
Well yeah, that is the whole point.
To be more constructive: I don't even understand what you mean? I'd say this is more on par with implementing one's own OS kernel, than what I associate with being a "script kiddie". Sure, it's easy. Just a bit of C and assembler, and you can copy an existing design. Anyone with half a brain can do it...