Top all-time · #12140
IC reverse engineering and other adventures
Personal blog · uvicrec.blogspot.comhardwarescience
IC reverse engineering and other adventures is a personal blog at uvicrec.blogspot.com about hardware and science. Since 2012, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 7 times, most often “Lab explosions and accidents”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for IC reverse engineering: decapping and microscopy of chips, a chip-level teardown of a Williams blitter, and a post on lab explosions and accidents.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Integrated circuit reverse engineering musings. As I try different things, a brain dump of what went well and what didn't.
Most-linked posts?
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-02-24
- Lab explosions and accidents2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-24
What Hacker News says?
I stress this is just me noodling around, and that I'm not talking about real world risks. But: Is it possible to read unencrypted data of the flash drive the hard way? Obviously, if it's sensibly encrypted there's no point. But a person may think they have physically destroyed a flash drive only to have left information available. Here's some links to DIY de-capping and microscopy of a variety of ICs: ( http://sili…
Comment linking /
on “US Appeals Court: Forced Decryption Is Self-Incrimination”Submitted Lab explosions and accidents as a story · 145 points
HN discussionThanks! This is a good starting point: http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/2015/12/lab-explosions-and-accid...
Comment linking /2015/12/lab-explosions-and-accidents.html
on “Siliconpr0n: High Resolution Chip Maps”Submitted Characterizing the SBM-20 Geiger-Müller Tube as a story · 9 points
HN discussionAh. Some relevant information on reverse engineering silicon: * Degate, a somewhat automated "aid in reverse engineering of digital logic in integrated circuits" - http://www.degate.org/ * Silicon Zoo offers a tutorial / background info on this - http://siliconzoo.org/tutorial.html * A blog about IC reverse engineering - http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/ (from the owner of http://siliconpr0n.org/ , which is currently dow…
Comment linking /
on “How secure is Linux's random number generator?”I looked into reverse engineering of silicon recently, so here are some resources drawn from my comments in a thread about Linux and Intel's PRNG: * Degate, a somewhat automated "aid in reverse engineering of digital logic in integrated circuits" - http://www.degate.org/ * Silicon Zoo offers a tutorial / background info on this - http://siliconzoo.org/tutorial.html - and it mentions that Pentium I-era chips were "ea…
Comment linking /
on “Scientist banned from revealing codes used to start luxury cars”John McMaster does some amazing stuff. Here's an example of how he took a section of a chip (Williams Special Chip 1, a blitter device used in a lot of video games) and reversed it back down to a pair of gates: http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/2013/03/williams-special-chip-1-...
Comment linking /2013/03/williams-special-chip-1-sc1.html
on “Fund high-resolution 80386 and 80486 series top metal photos”
