Some may find it a good news and some may find it a bit risky as researchers from Xerox PARC, have now come up with a new type of cryptographic processor dubbed Xerox PARC processor, which is capable of self-destructing if someone ordered to do so.
The researcher have created the cryptographic processor under a DARPA-funded security push which aims to create ways of safeguarding top secret information that are less susceptible to hacking if they fall into the wrong hands.
The chip was built on a Corning Gorilla Glass substrate.
“The applications we are interested in are data security and things like that,” Gregory Whiting, a senior scientist at PARC in Palo Alto, California, told Extreme Tech. “We really wanted to come up with a system that was very rapid and compatible with commercial electronics.”
“We take the glass and we ion-exchange temper it to build in stress,” said Whiting. “What you get is glass that, because it’s heavily stressed, breaks it fragments into tiny little pieces.
According to a news report published in Extreme Tech, creating a chip that can store cryptography keys and self-destruct if it falls into the wrong hands could solve a problem that’s as old as cryptography itself how do you ensure that the right recipient can read your messages, while still protecting the data from unauthorized recipients?
However, quantum computing could offer a potential solution to this in the long run as attempting to read the data being transferred between two quantum computers will inevitably change the data-state and alert the users that they are being spied on. Since quantum computing remains a long way off, however, other solutions for data security are needed.
So, in order to address this issue, the researchers came up with the Xerox PARC processor.
Many people expressed their opinion regarding the Xerox PARC processor.
SH4ZB0T commented, “It reminds me of the MIPS-X instruction hsc (that I believe was a joke).”
Whereas, Darkstar36 said, “Now hackers really can make your computer explode! What a time to be alive.”
Mikemol said, “Anyone else amused at the thermal limits this places on a device? You're not going to want to leave it in your car on a hot day. (So, for things like DRM device keys in mobile devices, this might not be the best solution...”
