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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Hackers hope to democratize laser-based processor hacking for
 $500
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2024 10:46:15 +1000
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On 4/08/2024 11:05 pm, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>   https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/hackers-hope-to-democratize-laser-based-processor-hacking-dollar500-rayv-lite-relies-on-3d-printing-a-laser-pen-and-a-raspberry-pi-to-bring-costs-down#main

I actually worked on a electron-microscope based electron beam tester in 
the late 1980's.

We weren't proposing to offer EBIC - electron beam induced change - 
though we had on an earlier tester, and nobody had used it (probably 
because it can permanently mess up the chip).

A laser-based microscope won't have the resolution to focus the beam on 
a specific transistor - and there were millions of transistors on the 
sort of chips we were expecting to test, even back then.

Electron microscopes do offer better image resolution. Optical 
lithography now depends on a 14 nanometer wavelength light source - a 
300 nanometre wavelenght laser isn't in the hunt.

And we expected that our customers would have access to the chip layout 
and schematic so that they would be able to work out which transistor 
did what.

The hackers might well be able mess up the operation of the chips that 
they point their laser-beams at, but they won't be able to do it in any 
kind of systematic way.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney

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