grinding down chips was Re: QX10 graphics board

[Chuck Guzis]

On 1/26/2006 at 9:24 PM Richard wrote:

>Aren't there chips (i.e. crypto) that are designed to be destroyed
>if they are disassembled?  I don't know what they do to the package,
>but if I had an IC with an EPROM containing my crypto keys, I'd want
>the chip to self-destruct during an attempt to pry open the package

I don't know about grinding, but the guy at MIT who figured out the Xbox
innards did something of the sort (regardless, it's a great read):

http://www.xenatera.com/bunnie/proj/anatak/xboxmod.html

The operative term is "decapsulating";  if you google on it, you can find
some interesting stuff, like:

http://www.smtinfocus.com/technical_papers_list.html

Cheers,
Chuck