[evancox100]

What is a TEM shop? Curious about this topic, the threat model for some chips in the secure payments space assumes a secret value much higher than $10k for something like a root encryption key that blows open the payment processing security of multiple cards.

Also, just because something is physically possible, doesn't mean that the barriers to doing so are irrelevant. If it costs you $10k to unbrick a locked & stolen iPhone, then those countermeasures have likely succeeded at their intended purpose. This is why threat models try to quantify the time and/or monetary value of what they're protecting.

[baybal2]

Tunneling electron microscope

A single facility for TEM comes with $10,00,000+ pricetag, and usually they amount to few dozens per a developed country, in use in places like universities, and research institutes.

China has probably more of them than the rest of the world combined.