Defcon Badge Hides Revolutionary Open Source Chip

This year's Defcon hacker conference badges feature a revolutionary, mostly open source chip designed by Andrew "bunnie" Huang. Named the Baochip-1x, this chip aims to advance security, transparency, and trustworthiness in computing.

The chip's design is unique because it allows for verification down to the silicon level. Unlike conventional chips encased in opaque plastic, the Baochip can be inspected using infrared light, enabling users to compare the physical silicon against its published design.

Developed over three years, the Baochip-1x fulfills Huang's long-held goal of creating a verifiable security chip. He has made the source code for its operating system, firmware, and other components publicly available on GitHub.

Attendees can remove the chip's core module after the conference to use it as a hardware security token. This detachable component supports time-based one-time passwords and password management, offering a new level of security previously unavailable in hardware tokens.

Huang collaborated with Crossbar, a company that provided manufacturing access. This allowed Huang to share a fabrication run, significantly reducing costs. The Baochip utilizes a RISC-V core, an open-source instruction set, making it a highly open alternative in the semiconductor industry.

While some low-level manufacturing elements remain proprietary, Huang emphasizes that the Baochip represents a significant leap in openness for security-oriented chips. The 27,000 badges distributed at Defcon mark the chip's first major release, significantly boosting its adoption.

The chip boasts secure boot, a random number generator, and hardware features to resist attacks, particularly remote, non-physical threats. It also employs resistive RAM (RRAM) for enhanced data security, making physical extraction more difficult than with conventional flash memory.

Huang acknowledges that while highly secure, the chip could be compromised with millions of dollars and a dedicated hardware-analysis lab. He anticipates Defcon attendees will stress-test the chip, potentially uncovering flaws that will lead to further improvements and security enhancements.