11 videos · 9 hr 33 minWho Watches the Silicon?
A descent through the layers of a computer you cannot see or audit, ordered from the peripherals inward to the CPU, its secret co-processors and firmware, then out to the board and the supply chain. Most of these are HN gems with modest view counts, and HN brings them up whenever Intel ME, backdoors or hardware trust come up. It ends with the defender's view: how Microsoft built a console meant to survive people with soldering irons.
Play all on YouTube- 15:22
Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys
pucitp · Picked by 1 · 2011–2020A five-minute Princeton demo that encryption keys survive in DRAM after power-off, a quick first sign that the hardware doesn't behave the way you assume.
- 244:31
BadUSB - On Accessories that Turn Evil by Karsten Nohl + Jakob Lell
Black Hat · Picked by 1 · 2014–2019Nohl and Lell reprogram USB controller firmware to impersonate other devices, which HN treats as the standard reference for why any USB stick is a computer you don't control.
- 344:29
Breaking the x86 Instruction Set
Black Hat · Picked by 9 · 2017–2022Christopher Domas fuzzes the processor itself with Sandsifter and finds undocumented instructions; HN calls it easy to follow and entertaining.
- 446:04
DEF CON 26 - Christopher Domas - GOD MODE UNLOCKED Hardware Backdoors in redacted x86
DEFCONConference · Picked by 4 · 2019–2026The follow-up: a hidden alternate instruction set on a real x86 chip that bypasses privilege rings, the talk HN brings up in every CPU-backdoor thread.
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1:02:52Joanna Rutkowska: Towards (reasonably) trustworthy x86 laptops
media.ccc.de · Picked by 2 · 2016–2019Rutkowska steps back from single bugs to ask whether an x86 laptop with Intel ME can be trusted at all, and one HN commenter labeled it essential.
- 6
38:03Replace Your Exploit-Ridden Firmware with Linux - Ronald Minnich, Google
The Linux Foundation · Picked by 6 · 2017–2023Google's Minnich explains UEFI as a large closed attack surface and why his team wanted to replace it with Linux, the firmware talk HN keeps linking.
- 7
1:06:20USENIX ATC '21/OSDI '21 Joint Keynote Address-It's Time for Operating Systems to Rediscover Hardware
USENIX · Picked by 12 · 2021–2026Timothy Roscoe zooms out to show how much of a modern SoC runs below and beside Linux, which HN found revelatory and which explains why the earlier talks were possible.
- 8
45:38BlueHat IL 2019 - Andrew "bunnie" Huang - Supply Chain Security: "If I were a Nation State...”
Microsoft Israel R&D Center · Picked by 6 · 2019–2024Leaving the chip for the board: bunnie gives a measured, technical look at how realistic a hidden implant is, written in the wake of the Supermicro story.
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1:41:27Defcon 21 - Decapping Chips The Strike Easy Hard Way
HackersOnBoard · Picked by 3 · 2014–2025Laurie and Franken show how to take a chip's package off and read its ROM from the die, the practical answer to whether you can just look inside.
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1:00:4636C3 - Open Source is Insufficient to Solve Trust Problems in Hardware
media.ccc.de · Picked by 2 · 2020–2023bunnie's harder conclusion is that checking hardware destroys it, so even open designs leave a time-of-check/time-of-use gap, and he sketches what might narrow it.
- 11
58:05Guarding Against Physical Attacks: The Xbox One Story — Tony Chen, Microsoft
Platform Security Summit · Picked by 8 · 2019–2026The defender gets the last word: a mostly successful design, built to make any hardware attack cost more than buying the games, and HN's standard reference for it.