Christopher Tarnovsky
More info
- Known for
- Physical attack on an Infineon TPM chip (2010)
- Company
- Flylogic Engineering
The hardware hacker who dissolves chip packaging in acid and reads the secrets straight off the wires with needles.
At Black Hat 2010 Tarnovsky showed how he had defeated the protections on an Infineon chip from the family used in TPM modules: acid to expose the die, a microscope to find the right bus lines and microprobes to tap the data unencrypted. It took roughly six months, and he readily admitted it was no threat to ordinary users — but it made clear that "tamper-resistant" is a relative term.
He had previously worked for NDS on pay-TV smart cards and was dragged into the satellite operators' litigation, accused of leaking cracked cards. The allegations never produced a conviction against him personally.