Approved Tech ATRS - FFE

[Sere Reene]

Image Source | Upper Image Custom
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Intent: Advanced Tamper Resistance for chips, circuits and electrical devices on certain components. To be installed in FFE’s future products, to stop other companies copying their technology without putting in a lot of effort to break the ATRS design, in edition to the products own internal tamper resistance if any.

Development Thread: Project ATRS
Manufacturer: Fire For Effect - FFE
Model: ATRS Mk1 - Advanced Tamper Resistant System
Affiliation: Fire For Effect only, unless contracted out under license.
Modularity: No
Production: Mass Produced
Material: Nutorium Casing, Pemex, Electrite Crystal, Transmission Wire

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Description:
Advanced Tamper Resistance, Tri-Defense, Multi Redundancy Approach

Areas Covered:

1. Physical Packaging
2. Software
3. Hardware

1) Physical Packaging:

1.1 Sensor Mesh
All ATRS circuits have a sensor mesh added both below and above the board, all paths in a standard sensor mesh are monitored for interruptions or short circuits when power should be available. If the mesh is broken or tampered with, the circuits are overloaded and memory fried.

1.2 Life form indicators
Standard sensors, used to detect if anything organic gets too close to the circuit, inside the casing, and if so fry the circuit. This will not work on droids, the range is either set to half way inside the case, or 1mm from the chip depending on where or how the ATRS is installed.

1.3 Nutorium Casing
Around the circuit the Nutorium casing is resistant to sensors, thus the chip itself and circuit cannot be probed in the first place easily without breaching it, and setting off other fail safes.

2) Hardware

2.1 Bus and Data Scrambling
The order of the circuits data bus is scrambled to confuse attackers, and make it difficult to observe signals either through the force or technology, as there is seemingly no logic to the data which is varied and deciphered on the fly internally.

2.2 Ring oscillators
Using a series of logic gates, ring oscillators decipher whether a circuit is being probed, they are often immune to external disturbances, and thus when they are forcibly disturbed they register this, frying the components circuits.

2.3 Anti Glitching and Light Sensors.
Using a full spectrum transceiver, voltage and light sensors are used to see if the voltage is being tampered with, or a slicer is trying to glitch the system, while light sensors are used to see if the device is being removed in part or in whole to be attacked separately, frying the circuits and wiping memory.

2.4 Fixed Chip Sizing
In the case of all ATRS redundant defenses failing and the base chip itself being modified, the number of switches on each chip and circuit board is fixed, so that anything added or removed will fry the circuit, making upgrades or repairs all but impossible. The logical way around this hard barrier, is to steal a secured prototype base chip from FFE before this is enabled and work from there.

3) Internal Software

3.1 Junk Data
Junk data is transmitted intermittently around the circuit every few seconds, false packets that need to be filtered out in the system itself, if they are not they trigger the system to fry itself, there is a triple backup system in place to filter these on regular chips in case of missing it if the chip is under extreme stress. Even in a replication of the device, unless you know exactly what should and shouldn’t be sent makes it fraught with hazards, because how do you know what signals are junk or not unless you designed it?

Disadvantages to ATRS:

• Due to the high level of tamper resistance, breaches to the components or circuits that use ATRS usually result in them self-destructing themselves, not fatally to the owner, but fatally to the components.
• Self Repair is highly difficult to any sensitive areas of a component, thus FFE offers a free repair replacement to any ATRS equipped module for the first standard galactic cycle after purchase (year), increasing cost to the company.
• There is an obvious increased cost of production and complexity on any installed component.

Primary Source: N/A

Canon and RL Sources
Tamper Resistance
Ring Oscillator
Nutorium
Permex
Full-spectrum Transceiver
Lifeform Indicator
Electrite Crystal

 

[Ordo]

[member="Sere Reene"]

OMG you are under review.

 

[Ordo]

1.2 Life form indicators Standard sensors, used to detect if anything organic gets too close to the circuit, inside the casing, and if so fry the circuit. This will not work on droids.

What is the sensor range? I ask because someone will undoubtedly try to fry your products using organic matter.

2.1 Bus and Data Scrambling The order of the circuits data bus is scrambled to confuse attackers, and make it difficult to observe signals either through the force or technology, as there is seemingly no logic to the data which is varied and deciphered on the fly internally.

Does this kind of hardware limit the capabilities of your products? Does this increase the likelihood of product failure?

3.1 Junk Data Junk data is transmitted intermittently around the circuit, false packets that need to be filtered out in the system itself, if they are not they trigger the system to fry itself, there is a triple backup system in place to filter these on regular chips in case of extreme stress in regular use. Even in a replication of the device, unless you know exactly what should and shouldn’t be sent makes it fraught with hazards, because how do you know what signals are junk or not unless you designed it?

This seems like it would reduce the capabilities of the chip and general products. Does this hinder the products ability to function at desired standards?

[member="Sere Reene"]

None of the things I've asked are deal breakers but i feel due to the range of resistances to tampering you have in this submission that it needs to be fleshed out more for the sake of balance. I want you to get the most out of you idea so be sure and tag me when you have edited. If you have any questions or arguments please PM them to me so the factory is less cluttered. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Your local meatbag.

 

[Sere Reene]

[member="Ordo"]

1, Done - however if the case is open or breached the light sensors will fry it anyway, this is the big disadvantage to using it and I hope the balance, and why it'll only be used on high end or heavily deved stuff most likely, but I can't guarantee what it'll be used on or not so I didn't list any specifics.

2, No Encryption in RL is widely used with little slowdowns these days.

3, Expanded this to be only every few seconds, a few operations every few seconds would have little to no effect on any chips performance that calculates millions of instructions per second, but that also makes them hard to find .

 

[Ordo]

[member="Sere Reene"]

Excellent, I just want to make sure bases are covered.

Pending Secondary.

 

[Allyson Locke]

Approved.