IBM 4758
More info
- Manufacturer
- IBM
- Type
- Cryptographic coprocessor (PCI)
- Successor
- IBM 4764
IBM's late-1990s PCI crypto card, the first product certified at the top level of FIPS 140-1.
The card was a complete computer in a shielded, sensor-laden enclosure: its own processor, its own memory and a mesh of conductors that wiped the keys if anyone drilled, froze or X-rayed it. Its FIPS 140-1 Level 4 certificate made it the reference point for what tamper resistance could mean in practice, and banks ran their PIN processing on it.
The irony is that the best-known attack never touched the enclosure. Around 2001, Mike Bond, Ross Anderson and Richard Clayton showed that sequences of perfectly legitimate calls to the CCA interface could coax keys out of it. The hardware held; the API leaked. The line continued with the 4764 and later cards.