( ESNUG 288 Item 1 ) ----------------------------------------------- [5/7/98]
Subject: ( ESNUG 287 #5 ) "Crack VMC & Win $75,000" Is A Rigged Sucker's Bet
> I noticed that you are one of the vmc contest officials. You know as well
> as I do that this is a sucker's bet. There is no way to extract the design
> from a VMC model and if anything I would be the only one that could even
> get close to extracting any sort of information that even resembled the
> design. So I guess synopsys will not be giving away that humvee.
From: landmh@taec.toshiba.com (Howard Landman)
John,
I think I agree that, if the compiled model DOES NOT CONTAIN the information
which is needed to reconstruct the source to the level required by the
contest, then this is not only a sucker bet but also a red herring. It's a
sucker bet because, it's like having a contest to decompile a C program
where you can't win unless you recreate the original variable names - and
where the binary has been stripped so that information isn't available.
The reason it's a red herring is that you don't NEED to recreate the source
to that level for the model to be insecure. Generating an equivalent RTL
or gate level netlist (the $18,000 prize) is already a SERIOUS breach of
security. It's rather disingenuous to imply that only decrypting information
which doesn't even exist constitutes "breaking" the encryption!
Synopsys should either be willing to state that they know the requirements
for winning the Humvee are mathematically possible to achieve, or else
reduce them until they are.
Then, too, if Synopsys was really serious, this contest wouldn't have a time
limit of only 6 weeks. Most serious decryption challenges have a timescale
of years.
In the real world, most security problems are human, not technical. "Social
engineering" often succeeds where computer science would fail. I'll split
whatever I win 50-50 with the first person (eligible or not) who emails me
the original source or any other form of prize-winning solution in time for
me to submit it. :-)
- Howard Landman
Toshiba America Electronic Components
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