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Comment by mosura | Hacker News Reader

The most obvious thing would be Intel making security processor modules. Get the supply chain for those onshore, from the US point of view.

Doesn’t require the absolute latest processes.

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I think this is a very astute comment.

It reminded me that for a while all SIM everywhere seemed to come from one european chip plant, although now I say it I wonder if they were just the assembly & packaging and fabrication was offshore?

In both cases (tpm and sim) the cynic would say it's only deciding which economy owns the back-door.

You are probably referring to NXP (formerly Philips) and Infineon (formerly Siemens), both of which have produced crypto processors, smartcards (including SIMs) and other secure elements for a really long time. Infineon is/was actually a really common supplier for the little 20-pin TPM/LPC modules.

Yes i think you're right. The nexus of sim, smart card and tpm seems strong. I e used thales and Luna (now also thales) HSM which are in hypothesis glamorous, but ultimately remarkably pedestrian secure devices. I wonder if they include logic from these companies. Supply chain behind FIPS120 class stuff would be an interesting story.

It was Gemplus. The backstory about how CIA and NSA got control over it is fascinating.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemalto#Gemplus>

More here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPG_Inc.>

What, in your mind, is a "security processor module"? As far as I'm aware, there is no such entity in Apple systems; security functionality is on the same die as the CPU/GPU. (Which is a good thing; it means that communications between the CPU and that security processor cannot easily be intercepted or interfered with.)

There is a "secure element" which contains eSIM and NFC and is a separate chip. I believe NXP makes them but don't know. But there's plenty of other chips like power management.

I always heard of the T2 chip.

Those don't exist in ARM Macs.

Those were binned Apple A series chips.

They used some of parts of it like the secure enclave, SSD controller, biometrics and hardware disk encryption.

Now days, those components are all already built into the M series chips.

T2 is no longer a thing since the Apple Silicon chips. Apple moved their support chips into the main SoC.

If TSMC is compromised, getting the security processor made in the US won't help.

The CPU enforces the security boundary between web pages, apps, the OS, the hypervisor and so on. If you control that, you control everything.

Apple has more than enough resources to sample check chip deliveries for being manipulated.

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