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by praptak 26 days ago
When I studied CS one of our professors told us the US military had chips with self destruct ops in the 1980s. I could never confirm this particular story but there was a much later DARPA program which aimed at self destructing electronics for the army.

This article makes me think the professor's story might be an urban legend based on such an accidental opcode.
2 comments
casefields 24 days ago
>The cryptographic module shall contain tamper response and zeroization circuitry that shall continuously monitor the tamper detection envelope and, upon the detection of tampering, shall immediately zeroize all plaintext secret and private cryptographic keys and CSPs.

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/fips/nist.fips.140-2.pdf

Some more discussion here: https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/decla...

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aa-jv 24 days ago
I have worked on systems that have a thermite charge under the RAM and EPROM chips, wired up to GPIO for 'terminate and stay that way' instructions. It is not an urban legend - just a highly protected secret. Those products which require this feature are not usually discussed in consumer circles ..
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