Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#51

Post by pbronez » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 3:30 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #48

_factor wrote: post #29

A 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 thi…

Heh and farming, even subsistence farming, is at the mercy of weather/climate, animal migration patterns, human labor and thus health…

Nobody has perfect knowledge of their world. All we have are heuristics that work well enough to get by. It’s by definition impossible to anticipate out-of-context events that barge in like the Vogons.

Excession by Iain Banks is a fun exploration of this concept. It’s set in his “Culture” universe, where a hybrid human/AI culture enjoys an interstellar empire. Excession imagines that powerful civilization encountering a phenomenon that is as far beyond them as they are beyond us, or we are beyond the subsistence farmer.

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#52

Post by pbronez » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 3:33 PM UTC

frabert wrote: post #13

MrGilbert wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping you from starting today?

Lack of motivation to work on more technical stuff after having done the same all day at work? Mental exhaustion? Wanting to spend the remaining free time with loved ones instead?

I’ve found it empowering to say “this is fascinating to me, and I would enjoy spending significant time diving into it, but I choose not to prioritize that right now.”

This works much better for me than simply griping that “I don’t have time to X”. It acknowledges that I COULD make time for X, but it isn’t worth the current cost.

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#53

Post by nonrandomstring » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 3:42 PM UTC

sdwr wrote: post #49

_factor wrote: post #40

Earlier 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…

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 w…

You are minimising [0,1].

(I also think you are wrong in your risk asessment)

[0] https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/minimizing.html

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimisation_(psychology)

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#54

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 3:52 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #50

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #46

So 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 bit…

Oh, good point. I guess it depends on your usecase. I was thinking from the angle of not trusting premade network cards but trusting your USB chips.... which now that you point out, is also not a given. Maybe bare serial (just a wire per tx/rx), but it suddenly occurs to me that I don't know how that's actually connected to the CPU, and I think that approaching this from a security angle is a quick road to madness. OTOH... connecting a microcontroller to serial probably is the simplest option and as an engineering exercise is perfectly reasonable, if not exactly fast, but hey it's not like this was ever going to be performant.

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#55

Post by jbboehr » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 3:56 PM UTC

sdwr wrote: post #49

_factor wrote: post #40

Earlier 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…

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 w…

> "what I have is so valuable that other people want to take it!"

While I do agree this may apply somewhat to the original topic, your dig at suburbanites seems like a mischaracterization. Perhaps the upper/upper-middle classes feel this way. I would expect most other folks are primarily worried about being murdered during the event.

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#56

Post by nonrandomstring » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #47

phkahler wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> “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…

> I think people understand cybersecurity very well

People do understand the risks in cybersecurity very well [0].

Here we interviewed literally ransom strangers on the street, There are about 10 or 20 individuals in this episode but in fact I've interviewed over 100 now and it's all the same;

1) People are very aware of risks, phishing, backdoors, bad links, not scanning QR codes, not installing dodgy "apps"... they get it. Kids get it, Old people get it.

2) They are very aware of the consequences; "identity theft", being tricked, having money stolen, being embarrassed or blackmailed, loss of device or denial of service... Mums get it. Grannies get it.

3) There are daytime TV interviews with people crying their hearts out on camera after being scammed of their life savings. These are popular programmes presented by family presenters like Angela Rippon and Ester Ranzen in the UK.

4) They don't have the first clue who to turn to, or any sense of empowerment to do anything about it (other than abstain). Some think the government should step in. Others say schools and parents are responsible for educating kids from a young age in digital self defence.

So the old "What have I got to hide" trope is painfully naive now and limited to a few diehard old computer beards still in denial that their Internet got fucked-over by criminals.

I think it's important to be in touch with what real people (outside our echo chamber of developers and hackers) really think.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=18

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#57

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #54

pjc50 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bit…

Oh, good point. I guess it depends on your usecase. I was thinking from the angle of not trusting premade network cards but trusting your USB chips.... which now that you point out, is also not a given. Maybe bare serial (just a wire per tx/rx), but it suddenly occurs to me that I don't know how that's actually connected to the CPU, and I think that approaching this from a security angle is a quick road to madness. O…

> Maybe bare serial (just a wire per tx/rx), but it suddenly occurs to me that I don't know how that's actually connected to the CPU

In practice today, if you have a DB9 serial port, that goes into the section of the chipset which is concerned with all the "legacy" interfaces, which ultimately turns up on the PCIe bus like everything else.

> I think that approaching this from a security angle is a quick road to madness

Yes.

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#58

Post by ynoxinul » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #46

So 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…

If a normal PC had an ISA bus (like they did 30 years ago), my network card could have been connected to it with just some minor modifications.

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#59

Post by reaperducer » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 5:32 PM UTC

jbboehr wrote: post #55

sdwr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> "what I have is so valuable that other people want to take it!" While I do agree this may apply somewhat to the original topic, your dig at suburbanites seems like a mischaracterization. Perhaps the upper/upper-middle classes feel this way. I would expect most other folks are primarily worried about being murdered during the event.

While I do agree this may apply somewhat to the original topic, your dig at suburbanites seems like a mischaracterization. I would expect most other folks are primarily worried about being murdered during the event.

With the murder rate in America near historic lows, I think the person you're replying to is spot-on. It's a lot of hysteria fueled by social media, foreign actors, and the fact that security paranoia is a very lucrative business for a lot of companies.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...

Yes, there has been a recent uptick, but it's still 30% below what it was 30 years ago. Heck, it's almost 20% lower than it was 100 years ago.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088644/homicide-suicide...

To find a U.S. murder rate lower than 2014, you have to go back to 1906.

But security companies, alarm companies, conservative politicians and their media partners, police unions, and others with a financial interest foam at the mouth to make it seem like things have never been worse.

Re: Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card

#60

Post by nonrandomstring » Tue, Apr 09, 2024, 5:47 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #59

jbboehr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "what I have is so valuable that other people want to take it!" While I do agree this may apply somewhat to the original topic, your dig at suburbanites seems like a mischaracterization. Perhaps the upper/upper-middle classes feel this way. I would expect most other folks are primarily worried about being murdered during the event.

While I do agree this may apply somewhat to the original topic, your dig at suburbanites seems like a mischaracterization. I would expect most other folks are primarily worried about being murdered during the event. With the murder rate in America near historic lows, I think the person you're replying to is spot-on. It's a lot of hysteria fueled by social media, foreign actors, and the fact that security paranoia is…

A fascinating finding is that the explosion of cybercrime (against the person, so scams, theft etc) inversely and almost perfectly tracks the fall in violent physical crimes like robbery, hijack, burglary [0].

This leads to the problematic idea that a high tolerance is given to cybercrime because it "shifts" it to a more acceptable form (given that all other factors, policing budgets, causes of crime etc remain constant).

That's one interesting conspiracy/explanation for why rampant digital crime is officially played down whereas almost non-existent street crime is "marketed" by Amazon Ring and other elements of the "Insecurity Industry"

[0] https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/measuring-the-...