So, I read this as a “discrete logic network” “card” rather than “discrete logic” “network card”.
All set to learn what a discrete logic network was.
Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> these unknowns Sorry to throw a Rumsfeld at you, but I think these are "unknown unknowns". If people were aware of the presence and significance of such critical knowledge voids I do not believe they would tolerate them. I see it as the job of civic cybersecurity to bring precisely these sorts of things to wider attention and educate folk on why they are are problematic.
I think visibility is one aspect, but not the whole story. An average home user runs Windows and doesn’t necessarily care if a hypothetical backdoor could exist in their hardware/software stack. They browse the web, do their banking, and share photos on SM after checking their mail and searching for Tiramisu recipes. The existential threat to themselves is low, so they don’t dig further into the ramifications. Journa…
I get the sense it isn’t possible. “What do I have to hide?” “Who would target me?” “I have nothing worth stealing.” Sadly, all those are common replies to what you’re saying needs more awareness.
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#43In Communication Systems Engineering studies we implemented ethernet signalling, then the TCP/IP stack including ARP and switching in Motorola 68k QUIC assembly.
Longest 18 months of my life.
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think visibility is one aspect, but not the whole story. An average home user runs Windows and doesn’t necessarily care if a hypothetical backdoor could exist in their hardware/software stack. They browse the web, do their banking, and share photos on SM after checking their mail and searching for Tiramisu recipes. The existential threat to themselves is low, so they don’t dig further into the ramifications. Journa…
I get the sense it isn’t possible. “What do I have to hide?” “Who would target me?” “I have nothing worth stealing.” Sadly, all those are common replies to what you’re saying needs more awareness.
>> “What do I have to hide?”
Your gmail account - which is used for password resets from anywhere on earth
>> “Who would target me?”
Criminals
>> “I have nothing worth stealing.”
How about your identity?
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#45This is really cool, I also love the modularity of this computer setup.
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#46So this is for an all-custom computer, which is rather more impressive on its own (to say nothing of "So I made a C compiler."), but now I'm curious what the minimal implementation of an ethernet card for a "normal" PC would be. I suspect a lot of it would be very similar, up to that you could do checksums on the PC's CPU (probably just baked into the driver). It'd need to be attached - either bare serial or more usefully USB? And then you'd either need to write a "real" driver for it or else plumb through to userspace and do it there. For similar things I've eyeballed having the device implement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications_device_clas... so it "just works" without needing to do your own driver, but I don't think that would play nice with things like doing all the checksums host-side. Or... while searching for that, I stumbled across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_USB , which maybe suggests that you can just build an adaptor that translates the physical connection to USB and then let the computer magically handle all the rest for you? Dunno, over my head.
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the sense it isn’t possible. “What do I have to hide?” “Who would target me?” “I have nothing worth stealing.” Sadly, all those are common replies to what you’re saying needs more awareness.
>> “What do I have to hide?” Your gmail account - which is used for password resets from anywhere on earth >> “Who would target me?” Criminals >> “I have nothing worth stealing.” How about your identity?
I think people understand cybersecurity very well in the context of a phone but don't think about it with desktops or laptops.
I let someone who was housesitting for a neighbor use my phone because she had left hers in the house and accidentally locked herself out. The neighbor called her back (on my phone of course) and she automatically handed it to me so I could unlock it.
My phone was never locked: too much of a pain to bother with.
It struck me then that I'm the only person I know who doesn't lock their phone. And that's primarily because I wasn't using Google Pay or had any information on that phone more sensitive than my mom's phone number.
For most people it seems that since a phone is a more personal item than their laptop, they instinctively do more to secure it.
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#48A network card with opaque firmware is a 0-day away from becoming a global catastrophe. Even RISC-V based switches like the Vega use proprietary switch chips (Wuhan China designed FSL91030M specifically), which is no better. You can verify input/output to a certain extent, but this doesn’t preclude a timer based function call or a tailored packet activation. I wonder why our society tolerates these unknowns. With the…
> I wonder why our society tolerates these unknowns
Society tolerates an infinite number of unknowns because it's impossible to know everything, or even a microscopic corner of "everything". The tradeoff for every society larger than a subsistence farming village is things you can't see happening over your horizon that you have to trust. Or trust in the vague hope that someone else is checking and would notice if things went bad.
> Wuhan
I had to look this up, and the business address is of course Shenzen, where you'd expect. https://milkv.io/about gives a Romanized address of "1603, Block B, FengHuang Zhigu Building No.50 Tiezai Road, Xixiang, Baoan Shenzhen, 518102 China", which is in a different administrative area from Wuhan and five hundred miles away. Not that it matters.
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> these unknowns Sorry to throw a Rumsfeld at you, but I think these are "unknown unknowns". If people were aware of the presence and significance of such critical knowledge voids I do not believe they would tolerate them. I see it as the job of civic cybersecurity to bring precisely these sorts of things to wider attention and educate folk on why they are are problematic.
I think visibility is one aspect, but not the whole story. An average home user runs Windows and doesn’t necessarily care if a hypothetical backdoor could exist in their hardware/software stack. They browse the web, do their banking, and share photos on SM after checking their mail and searching for Tiramisu recipes. The existential threat to themselves is low, so they don’t dig further into the ramifications. Journa…
Being worried about a hardware backdoor in your network card is more about technology fetishism than realistic threat analysis.
It's like suburbanites being worried about home invasion. Sure, it's technically possible to happen, but the concern reflects personal neuroses rather than practical considerations.
There's a disconnected, individual grandiosity in both cases - "what I have is so valuable that other people want to take it!". Conveniently, the solution always seems to be more individual actions to disconnect further. Security systems, lockdown, heightened fear of a shadowy Other.
Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
#50So this is for an all-custom computer, which is rather more impressive on its own (to say nothing of "So I made a C compiler."), but now I'm curious what the minimal implementation of an ethernet card for a "normal" PC would be. I suspect a lot of it would be very similar, up to that you could do checksums on the PC's CPU (probably just baked into the driver). It'd need to be attached - either bare serial or more use…
USB is arguably much more complicated than 10base2 internet, which pre-dates it by a long way. In fact, if you're trying to use either PCIe or USB to connect to a 10base2 ethernet network, either of those will be far more work than the Ethernet side.
You might be able to persuade a FTDI-style USB device to bit-bang 10base2 Ethernet for you. You'd implement a "PHY" side which translates the wire traffic to a clean bitstream and aligns the frame start and then just have the PC handle all of it in software for you.