How safe are risc-v processors?

Question

Information Security

How safe do you think ready-made processors (for example, from HiFive ) are? Can't these processors also have hidden features that can bypass the operating system? You can only blindly trust your products in this regard, or there are mechanisms to check the full functionality of RISC-V chips from any company and completely eliminate information leakage (in the military sphere and at the state level).

Answer 1

I remember either on BH, or somewhere else at the conference, the Intel security officer was asked
- Well, the chip from production has returned to you, how do you validate that there are no bookmarks from the manufacturer?
To which the security guard replied:
- No way. The complexity of the design is such that we can validate what is covered by our tests, go a little slow and that's it
. And all this is from a company that has its own OS on ring minus 2

Answer 2

For the Russian Federation, there are currently no safe processors with acceptable performance at all. I talked with representatives of our production even "OUR" Elbrus and those are produced at the TSMC plant over the hill. In Russia, we only have technology for processors up to 200 MHz and if the memory does not knock off 190nM. And forget about the periphery in general, we don’t have any network cards, or hard, or underweight motherboards. Everything is imported. Moreover, unlike the Arabs, we have a school of microprocessors and engineers and knowledge. But the plant is promised to be built since 2001. That's just it is still only promises. It is better to spend grandmas on blocking telegrams and the Internet than to raise their own factory.