asciilifeform: (who typically succumbs to the temptation of using hw-accelerates, e.g., aes? - folks setting up vpn or otherwise bridging nets with serious traffic. aka delicious targets for usg.)

asciilifeform: or - someone would like to see these put to use.

asciilifeform: better than an entirely fake one, sure.

asciilifeform: this is mildly suggestive of vendor having encouraged this

asciilifeform: last bit re: this gadget: seems like the open source folks were somehow clued in regarding, and dared to put to use, the aes acceleration.

asciilifeform: curiously, it even has a hardware galois field multiplier. to tempt folks using elliptic curves.

asciilifeform: i'd avoid the built-in aes, etc. instructions. if i were hitler and ordering a 'magic packet' back-door for this device, i would almost certainly ask that it spit back recently-used operands for these on the wire.

asciilifeform: pp. 658-9. in case someone was actually following this thread.

asciilifeform: interestingly, thing has an rng, and manual actually provides a schematic supposedly for it.

asciilifeform: the key to exploring the solar system is escaping the earth's gravity, yes. but easy to say!

asciilifeform: though there is an elaborate dance where folks implement xxxx and then pretend it wasn't using leaked/nda docs

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: right now it is elementary fear of usg that keeps the leaked docs scarce and largely unused

asciilifeform: (so many to choose from)

asciilifeform: they're stuck using weird turdware.

asciilifeform: i mention all of this because, while academic for the lot of us, there are folks who actually need to diddle 1M+ packets/sec. in some intelligent way.

asciilifeform: and That Would Be Wrong (tm)

asciilifeform: because, naturally, one would have to read the leaked ds

asciilifeform: interestingly, there is, afaik, no support for any of the spiffy bells & whistles (hardware tcp/ip, queueing, packet inspection, etc.) in any civilized os.

asciilifeform: hactive.googlecode.com/files/CN50XX-HRM-V0.99E.pdf << leaked data sheet for the soc in gadget mentioned earlier. you can't actually get this from the vendor.

asciilifeform reminds readers who may come across this device not to use vendor's turd - a fairly standard linux but with a closed kernel module, apparently

asciilifeform: metal chassis, rs232 port. very unusual in that respect. almost like something made 20 yrs. ago. hence the mention of it here.

asciilifeform: this here gadget is a ~100 usd piece that handily runs, say, a btc node. with good performance.

asciilifeform assumes his isp is the mitm vector of choice, and hence does not regard router as a serious hardened component. but has many problems with reliability and programmability of the usual consumer turdware.

asciilifeform: it has the cpu (really a soc), four drams, and a bunch of passives.

asciilifeform: it does come with a vendor turd os

asciilifeform: in the electron microscope sense? nein

asciilifeform: getting fairly good performance on one of these with freebsd 10.

asciilifeform: useful-things-announcement: a fairly civilized router, turns out, is one 'edgerouter lite' - 3 gigabit ports. mips64 processor with fairly good docs. nuke the vendor's turdware and install *bsd of your choice. the interesting thing about this gadget is that the firmware lives on an (internal) removable usb stick. can pull, examine, modify on standard comp, even theoretically install read-only unit.