Via Diane Attaway​

Via Diane Attaway​

Originally shared by mos6502

This week, the 6502 for peace, as a trusted computing platform. In the world of nuclear arms treaties, to verify compliance you need a portable and robust trusted computing platform with known behaviour and no backdoors. The 6502 is simple, and old, and well-understood, so in this talk from the CCC we learn about using an Apple IIe to capture data from a gamma ray detector and to compare a spectrum against a template. It turns out the 1MHz 6502 has the horsepower!

See the hour-long talk "Vintage Computing for Trusted Radiation Measurements and a World Free of Nuclear Weapons" from the recent CCC, and this website:
http://nuclearfutures.princeton.edu/vintageverification/

Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mTnnR4dSI

Slides:
http://www.princeton.edu/~aglaser/34c3-Vintage-Verification.pdf

Quote:
"Our prototype of an inspection system uses vintage hardware built around a 6502 processor. The processor uses 8-micron technology (about 600 times larger than current 14-nanometer technology) and has only about 3500 transistors. Vintage hardware may have a number of important advantages for applications where two parties need to simultaneously establish trust in the hardware used. CPUs designed in the distant past, at a time when their use for sensitive measurements was never envisioned, drastically reduce concerns that the other party implemented backdoors or hidden switches on the hardware level. Today, the design of the 6502 is de-facto open source, and several projects have explored the hardware in great detail (visual6502.org, monster6502.com). The technology is so basic that it would be difficult or impossible to surreptitiously implement extra functionalities that could be used to leak secret information."