Reverse Engineering Rights...

[Martin Brown]

On 03/05/2023 23:10, Ricky wrote:

On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 5:41:00 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 03/05/2023 18:53, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
onsdag den 3. maj 2023 kl. 17.54.04 UTC+2 skrev Ricky:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to
reverse engineer products they have bought. As an example, the
EU provides for this right. In the US, not so much. If a
supplier provides a board level component to an OEM, the
consumer has the right to reverse engineer the product
supplied. How does this convey to the board level component?

For example, a product is sold for office use, which contains a
small circuit board to convert power from the 12VDC input, to
the various voltages required. This power circuit board
contains a CPU/DSP, which controls the power conversions, and
communicates with the rest of the system to enable/disable
sections, and report status.

Will this power circuit board, being made by a company separate
from the OEM supplying the product, be under obligation to
allow reverse engineering of its product? If so, is this true,
even if the product is not produced in the EU?

Is there any way for the manufacturer of the power circuit
board to prevent legal reverse engineering of their product in
the EU?

Likewise, what rights apply to a similar situation, where the
IP under question is in a chip level device? Is this any
different? It hard to imagine a chip level device being reverse
engineered by an end user.


as long as you have legally obtained a product you can reverse
engineer it as much as you like
Some software contracts for example contain an undertaking not to
reverse engineer or decompile (not that it discourages anyone from
doing it). Sometimes it is the only way to find out what is going
wrong in a defective system library function once you have isolated
the fault.

I wonder if such a \"contract\" overrules the EU laws? In the US, the
third way of protecting IP is \"trade secret\". Is requires a signed
agreement by anyone you sell to, to retain the confidentiality. I\'m
thinking it does not provide protection from reverse engineering.

That isn\'t what a trade secret means in UK law. It is typically some
non-obvious trick during manufacture that achieves something that could
not otherwise be done but isn\'t worth the effort of patenting (or for
some reason the senior IP gurus decided not to bother).

Weird recipes for coating the insides of Faraday collectors and making
insanely high value precision resistors spring to mind where not only
are there hidden trade secrets but only a handful of people on the
planet know them or are able to implement them properly.

There is little expectation of anyone reverse engineering this
design, unless they suspect an infringement of IP. These products
are not sold to \"consumers\", but rather industry and government. So
I expect the \"rights\" are a bit different. We have a confidentiality
agreement, which covers distribution of actual IP, but not the design
itself.

I don\'t think you can do much even in US law about someone determining
the specification of the device and then implementing a pin compatible
and possibly better product from scratch. Intel x87 vs Cyrix FasMath and
Intel x86 vs NEC V30 spring to mind.

Anyone use trade secret to protect their IP?

Yes, but merely by not telling them how it is done.

Chemists of old would ask their assistant to get several reagents down
from the shelf take them to a small back room close the door mix up a
brew and return with it. This was one of the origins of trade secret -
at least some of the \"ingredients\" would ruin the intended product.

Only the master knew which ones until he was ready to retire (like the
Coke-Cola recipe). Production in chemical plants and (computer board
manufacture had house codes for chips too). ISTR A = 7400 and D = 7474

--
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 5/4/2023 12:51 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

That isn\'t what a trade secret means in UK law. It is typically some
non-obvious trick during manufacture that achieves something that could not
otherwise be done but isn\'t worth the effort of patenting (or for some reason
the senior IP gurus decided not to bother).

Weird recipes for coating the insides of Faraday collectors and making insanely
high value precision resistors spring to mind where not only are there hidden
trade secrets but only a handful of people on the planet know them or are able
to implement them properly.

In US law, Trade Secret is:
- only known by a \"limited\" group of people (note there is no specific count)
- actively maintained AS a secret (you require NDAs for folks that \"need\"
to know it -- and ENFORCE those)
- has some *commercial* value

Knowing the boss\'s mistress\'s name isn\'t a trade secret despite the
fact that few people know it and he takes steps to keep others from
learning it -- it has no commercial value (blackmail isn\'t recognized).

Knowing a weakness in a cryptographic protocol would qualify -- you\'d
likely keep that information closely held, take steps to prevent the folks
from knowing it from leaking it AND it has value commercially.

Knowing how much *salt* to put in a can of soup qualifies similarly!
It need not be something \"amazing\"!

As with most secrets, the flaw is that once the secret is out, it
loses its value almost immediately. Because often the value lies
only in its secrecy (not some highly technical process that
requires unobtainable equipment, etc).

If you look through the FCC database, you\'ll see many products
that decline to provide schematics. And, the photographic
images they *do* provide have all had part numbers airbrushed
off the components. This is a sad attempt at trying to protect
something by hiding information as one can always purchase a
unit (possibly through a third party to hide the true buyer)
and examine the components directly -- even if the markings
have been removed from THOSE components.

Ditto \"house numbers\" on parts. (OTOH, nowadays, that really
*may* be YOUR part and not available to others under some
other generic P/N!)

But, these things slow down competitors and counterfeiters.
(I never divulge my best recipes for baked goods; I\'ve
invested a lot of time \"tuning\" them and take pleasure in
noting that others can\'t reproduce them to the same results)

Trade secret protections are a great tool for giving you a head
start in a market that may be prone to counterfeiting. It\'s
relatively easy to clone a PCB. And, for software based devices,
easy to reverse engineer the code to an extent where you can at least
change embedded CLEARTEXT copyright notices and adjust mainstream
checksums to reflect your alterations. Even signed images can
be subverted -- just identify the signature verification code
and alter the conditional jump at the end.

OTOH, if you have *hidden* (secret!) mechanisms in the device that can
alter its performance when THEY detect some alteration then you can
make life \"troubling\" for the counterfeiter who is never quite sure if he
has identified -- and neutralized -- all such mechanisms.

If the mechanisms cause the inferior copy to be unacceptable to its
potential customers, then you\'ve deprived your counterfeiter of a
market (and a reputation!).

[This was commonplace during the video/arcade heyday ~1980. Counterfeiters
could have nearly identical products on the market overnight -- at lower
prices as they didn\'t have to expend effort on the designs! Trying to
concoct schemes of protecting the COTS design (potting modules, embedding
metal wires to confound Xrays, etc.) was a wasted effort. Design full
custom ICs that \"add value\" and require some effort to recreate in
*discrete*/COTS form AND make the software cleverer in its defense strategy]

The goal, of course, is to make cracking the protections as costly
as emulating the functionality FROM SCRATCH would have been. And,
for a naive counterfeiter, if he discovers this AFTER having invested
time and money trying to pursue that route, then his costs will be
even higher! (if he KNOWS that it will be costly to try to break
your secret protections, then he would just start off to make a
work-alike from the beginning!)

The other practical problem with trade secrets is they are harder
to \"sell\". I.e., you can evaluate the value of a patent when
deciding to buy a product/product-line from someone. But, its
much harder to put a dollar figure on a trade secret: \"how do
I know that it hasn\'t already leaked into the wild?\"

[And, patents have vanity appeal to some folks.]

In a perversely similar vein, trade secrets often are appealing
to *hackers*! There, its a badge of honor to have \"beaten you\".
And, these people are often anonymous, never executed an NDA with
you, etc. And, with the Internet, they can disseminate YOUR secret
widely, overnight. Who are you going to seek damages from?

[I was on a red-blue team for a few years and still give opinions
as to theeffectiveness of various protection schemes. Folks don\'t
realize how EASY it is to clone a design -- esp with most universities
having tools to deencapsulate chips, microprobe die, etc.]

I wonder what TAP would have been like if it could have been
more \"real-time\" in its publication?

 

[Don Y]

On 5/3/2023 10:28 PM, John Robertson wrote:

It could be replaced with a FPGA I assume. I just don\'t have the time or
skills to do that...

If you can fabricate a TTL equivalent, then its relatively easy
to convert that schematic to an FPGA (of suitable size)

There are likely no real performance issues beyond making sure
bank selects are stable before the associated device is accessed
(which could be the next bus cycle).  Easy peasy to meet those
sorts of constraints.

Thanks! - that is more in depth planning  than I had gotten to so far. It will
help if I can\'t get a volunteer to assist...

You\'ve got a schematic -- that\'s a huge start (no need to trace foils).
It gives you hints as to what the signals (and associated pins) are used
for. And, there\'s likely nothing done to obfuscate the design; it was
just an efficiency hack (sort of like putting a sound board on a chip)

E.g., I\'ve designed chips with embedded state that the designer
could exploit (\"secrets\") but that weren\'t visible to \'scope probes,
etc. So, the software could predict what the internal state would
be at some random point in time -- then, take an action knowing
how the GENUINE chip would respond and how a counterfeit (code or
chip) wouldn\'t.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2023-05-04 03:51, Martin Brown wrote:

On 03/05/2023 23:10, Ricky wrote:
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 5:41:00 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 03/05/2023 18:53, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
onsdag den 3. maj 2023 kl. 17.54.04 UTC+2 skrev Ricky:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to
reverse engineer products they have bought. As an example, the
EU provides for this right. In the US, not so much. If a
supplier provides a board level component to an OEM, the
consumer has the right to reverse engineer the product
supplied. How does this convey to the board level component?

For example, a product is sold for office use, which contains a
small circuit board to convert power from the 12VDC input, to
the various voltages required. This power circuit board
contains a CPU/DSP, which controls the power conversions, and
communicates with the rest of the system to enable/disable
sections, and report status.

Will this power circuit board, being made by a company separate
from the OEM supplying the product, be under obligation to
allow reverse engineering of its product? If so, is this true,
even if the product is not produced in the EU?

Is there any way for the manufacturer of the power circuit
board to prevent legal reverse engineering of their product in
the EU?

Likewise, what rights apply to a similar situation, where the
IP under question is in a chip level device? Is this any
different? It hard to imagine a chip level device being reverse
engineered by an end user.


as long as you have legally obtained a product you can reverse
engineer it as much as you like
Some software contracts for example contain an undertaking not to
reverse engineer or decompile (not that it discourages anyone from
doing it). Sometimes it is the only way to find out what is going
wrong in a defective system library function once you have isolated
the fault.

I wonder if such a \"contract\" overrules the EU laws?  In the US, the
third way of protecting IP is \"trade secret\".  Is requires a signed
agreement by anyone you sell to, to retain the confidentiality.  I\'m
thinking it does not provide protection from reverse engineering.

That isn\'t what a trade secret means in UK law. It is typically some
non-obvious trick during manufacture that achieves something that could
not otherwise be done but isn\'t worth the effort of patenting (or for
some reason the senior IP gurus decided not to bother).

If it\'s sufficiently non-obvious, keeping it as a trade secret avoids
some of the problems with patents. For instance, secrets don\'t expire
in 20 years; they don\'t involve disclosure; and they don\'t limit you to
what\'s in the claims.

Also, if it\'s recherche enough to be a viable trade secret, it\'s
probably not discoverable, i.e. it\'s unenforceable even if you have very
deep pockets.

On the other hand, if you patent it, nobody else can.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:54:04 AM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:

I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to reverse engineer products they have bought. As an example, the EU provides for this right. In the US, not so much. If a supplier provides a board level component to an OEM, the consumer has the right to reverse engineer the product supplied. How does this convey to the board level component?

For example, a product is sold for office use, which contains a small circuit board to convert power from the 12VDC input, to the various voltages required. This power circuit board contains a CPU/DSP, which controls the power conversions, and communicates with the rest of the system to enable/disable sections, and report status.

Will this power circuit board, being made by a company separate from the OEM supplying the product, be under obligation to allow reverse engineering of its product? If so, is this true, even if the product is not produced in the EU?

Is there any way for the manufacturer of the power circuit board to prevent legal reverse engineering of their product in the EU?

Likewise, what rights apply to a similar situation, where the IP under question is in a chip level device? Is this any different? It hard to imagine a chip level device being reverse engineered by an end user.

You can\'t reverse engineer something you couldn\'t forward engineer. Chinese think they can do it with just a picture, but we see how well that works, as in not at all.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 5/4/2023 16:44, Fred Bloggs wrote:

On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:54:04 AM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to reverse engineer products they have bought. As an example, the EU provides for this right. In the US, not so much. If a supplier provides a board level component to an OEM, the consumer has the right to reverse engineer the product supplied. How does this convey to the board level component?

For example, a product is sold for office use, which contains a small circuit board to convert power from the 12VDC input, to the various voltages required. This power circuit board contains a CPU/DSP, which controls the power conversions, and communicates with the rest of the system to enable/disable sections, and report status.

Will this power circuit board, being made by a company separate from the OEM supplying the product, be under obligation to allow reverse engineering of its product? If so, is this true, even if the product is not produced in the EU?

Is there any way for the manufacturer of the power circuit board to prevent legal reverse engineering of their product in the EU?

Likewise, what rights apply to a similar situation, where the IP under question is in a chip level device? Is this any different? It hard to imagine a chip level device being reverse engineered by an end user.

You can\'t reverse engineer something you couldn\'t forward engineer.

Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer
something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don\'t
know how much they don\'t know in order to do it. I have had a few
such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying
in vain.

 

[Don Y]

On 5/4/2023 7:52 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer
something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don\'t
know how much they don\'t know in order to do it. I have had a few
such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying
in vain.

Yes. But, a lot depends on the goal of the \"attacker\".
You don\'t have to understand how something works in order
to be able to *sell* (market) it. Likewise, you don\'t
need to understand how a thing works to be able to
COPY it!

That\'s where secrets about *process* can come into play;
i.e., tricks that make assembly, calibration, etc. easy (easier).

An example I used elsewhere this thread: knowing a vulnerability
in a security protocol can make it easier for you to subvert that
whereas someone else has to resort to brute force (time consuming)
attacks.

E.g., why guess a password when you can use tools that will
determine it FOR you (or, if the knowledge that security has
been subverted isn\'t important, just *reset* it!)

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2023-05-04 10:52, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 5/4/2023 16:44, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:54:04 AM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to reverse
engineer products they have bought. As an example, the EU provides
for this right. In the US, not so much. If a supplier provides a
board level component to an OEM, the consumer has the right to
reverse engineer the product supplied. How does this convey to the
board level component?

For example, a product is sold for office use, which contains a small
circuit board to convert power from the 12VDC input, to the various
voltages required. This power circuit board contains a CPU/DSP, which
controls the power conversions, and communicates with the rest of the
system to enable/disable sections, and report status.

Will this power circuit board, being made by a company separate from
the OEM supplying the product, be under obligation to allow reverse
engineering of its product? If so, is this true, even if the product
is not produced in the EU?

Is there any way for the manufacturer of the power circuit board to
prevent legal reverse engineering of their product in the EU?

Likewise, what rights apply to a similar situation, where the IP
under question is in a chip level device? Is this any different? It
hard to imagine a chip level device being reverse engineered by an
end user.

You can\'t reverse engineer something you couldn\'t forward engineer.

Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer
something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don\'t
know how much they don\'t know in order to do it. I have had a few
such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying
in vain.

Funny how those big-ass reverse engineering houses stay alive, isn\'t it?

e.g. TechInsights in Ottawa

<https://www.semiconductor-digest.com/techinsights-takes-reverse-engineering-into-the-cloud/>

I do a bunch of reverse engineering for intellectual property
litigation, most of it pretty simple--things like showing that there
aren\'t enough leads on a TV backlight LED strip for them to be sensing
every LED individually, that sort of thing.

I did get to purposely blow up one of Uber\'s lidar test boards, though.
Made an entertaining 10-decond video.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[John Robertson]

On 2023/05/04 8:24 a.m., Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2023-05-04 10:52, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 5/4/2023 16:44, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:54:04 AM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to reverse
engineer products they have bought. As an example, the EU provides
..

I do a bunch of reverse engineering for intellectual property
litigation, most of it pretty simple--things like showing that there
aren\'t enough leads on a TV backlight LED strip for them to be sensing
every LED individually, that sort of thing.

I did get to purposely blow up one of Uber\'s lidar test boards, though.
Made an entertaining 10-decond video.

Link?

It will be more entertaining than most links here recently I\'m sure!

John ;-#)#

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 5/4/2023 18:05, Don Y wrote:

On 5/4/2023 7:52 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer
something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don\'t
know how much they don\'t know in order to do it. I have had a few
such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying
in vain.

Yes.  But, a lot depends on the goal of the \"attacker\".
You don\'t have to understand how something works in order
to be able to *sell* (market) it.  Likewise, you don\'t
need to understand how a thing works to be able to
COPY it!

That\'s where secrets about *process* can come into play;
i.e., tricks that make assembly, calibration, etc. easy (easier).

An example I used elsewhere this thread:  knowing a vulnerability
in a security protocol can make it easier for you to subvert that
whereas someone else has to resort to brute force (time consuming)
attacks.

E.g., why guess a password when you can use tools that will
determine it FOR you (or, if the knowledge that security has
been subverted isn\'t important, just *reset* it!)

Copying without understanding it can be done at times, but I
am not sure this is \"reverse engineering\"?

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2023-05-04 13:42, John Robertson wrote:

On 2023/05/04 8:24 a.m., Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2023-05-04 10:52, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 5/4/2023 16:44, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:54:04 AM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to reverse
engineer products they have bought. As an example, the EU provides
..

I do a bunch of reverse engineering for intellectual property
litigation, most of it pretty simple--things like showing that there
aren\'t enough leads on a TV backlight LED strip for them to be sensing
every LED individually, that sort of thing.

I did get to purposely blow up one of Uber\'s lidar test boards,
though. Made an entertaining 10-decond video.

Link?

It will be more entertaining than most links here recently I\'m sure!

John ;-#)#

Nah, it was Uber\'s confidential info, under a ferocious protective
order, so it all got flushed very carefully when the case was over.

What I can tell you nonconfidentially is that Waymo\'s patent used an
inductor + diode to recharge the few-nanofarad storage cap to +40ish
volts from +24.

Their laser + GaN FET were in series across the cap, so when the FET
turned off, the LC went through half a cycle of a sine wave, and the
diode held it at the peak, which of course was near twice the supply.

The Uber circuit used a resistor from a +40V supply in the absolute most
vanilla way you can imagine, except that there was a ferrite bead
somewhere nearby (it didn\'t actually do anything to speak of), plus a
much larger reservoir cap feeding several laser channels.

Waymo\'s claim was that the bead was the claimed inductor, and that
Uber\'s resistor was \'equivalent\' to Waymo\'s diode. (There\'s a
\'doctrine of equivalents\' in patent law, which basically says that two
elements are equivalent if they do substantially the same thing in
substantially the same way.)

My take on it was that if the resistor was equivalent to the diode, then
a diode ought to be equivalent to the resistor. Sooo, I went on Digikey
and found a very nice diode that was a fair amount better than required
to do the Waymo circuit\'s job.

I stuck it in in place of the charging resistor, set up a video camera,
and set all the lasers pulsing. (Uber\'s test board had a lot of comfort
features for that--it was a pretty slick device actually.)

In the video, you could see two or three nearby channels pulsing at
normal brightness, and the modified one shining like a supernova, until
the laser or the FET turned to lava. (I\'m not sure which it was.)

I also did a bunch of circuit simulations, and wrote a very restrained
expert report that nonetheless got across how ridiculous Waymo\'s
argument was. At least I think it did, because they dropped the whole
patent-infringement side of the case within a few days of receiving it.


Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 5/4/2023 18:24, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2023-05-04 10:52, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 5/4/2023 16:44, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:54:04 AM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to reverse
engineer products they have bought. As an example, the EU provides
for this right. In the US, not so much. If a supplier provides a
board level component to an OEM, the consumer has the right to
reverse engineer the product supplied. How does this convey to the
board level component?

For example, a product is sold for office use, which contains a
small circuit board to convert power from the 12VDC input, to the
various voltages required. This power circuit board contains a
CPU/DSP, which controls the power conversions, and communicates with
the rest of the system to enable/disable sections, and report status.

Will this power circuit board, being made by a company separate from
the OEM supplying the product, be under obligation to allow reverse
engineering of its product? If so, is this true, even if the product
is not produced in the EU?

Is there any way for the manufacturer of the power circuit board to
prevent legal reverse engineering of their product in the EU?

Likewise, what rights apply to a similar situation, where the IP
under question is in a chip level device? Is this any different? It
hard to imagine a chip level device being reverse engineered by an
end user.

You can\'t reverse engineer something you couldn\'t forward engineer.

Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer
something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don\'t
know how much they don\'t know in order to do it. I have had a few
such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying
in vain.


Funny how those big-ass reverse engineering houses stay alive, isn\'t it?

Oh I never said nobody is busy doing it. During the Soviet occupation
here in Bulgaria there were huge blocks full of people reverse
engineering... the products of DEC, like PDP, VAX (never finished that
one I think, the regime broke down) etc. And they did reverse engineer,
not just clone.
Once on the open market after the regime collapsed and they could
no longer be subsidized they just died. Sort of to prove the point
I am making, there have been people capable of doing a lot more than
reverse engineering had they had the chance.

e.g. TechInsights in Ottawa

https://www.semiconductor-digest.com/techinsights-takes-reverse-engineering-into-the-cloud/

I do a bunch of reverse engineering for intellectual property
litigation, most of it pretty simple--things like showing that there
aren\'t enough leads on a TV backlight LED strip for them to be sensing
every LED individually, that sort of thing.

Well this proves my point, too . You *are* capable to forward engineer
those things, aren\'t you.

I did get to purposely blow up one of Uber\'s lidar test boards, though.
Made an entertaining 10-decond video.

Haven\'t seen it or don\'t remember I have. Please (re)post.

 

[Don Y]

On 5/4/2023 11:11 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 5/4/2023 18:05, Don Y wrote:
On 5/4/2023 7:52 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer
something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don\'t
know how much they don\'t know in order to do it. I have had a few
such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying
in vain.

Yes.  But, a lot depends on the goal of the \"attacker\".
You don\'t have to understand how something works in order
to be able to *sell* (market) it.  Likewise, you don\'t
need to understand how a thing works to be able to
COPY it!

That\'s where secrets about *process* can come into play;
i.e., tricks that make assembly, calibration, etc. easy (easier).

An example I used elsewhere this thread:  knowing a vulnerability
in a security protocol can make it easier for you to subvert that
whereas someone else has to resort to brute force (time consuming)
attacks.

E.g., why guess a password when you can use tools that will
determine it FOR you (or, if the knowledge that security has
been subverted isn\'t important, just *reset* it!)

Copying without understanding it can be done at times, but I
am not sure this is \"reverse engineering\"?

It depends on your goal. Are you going to try to figure out HOW it
works so you can reinvent a wheel that someone else has already
invented, but in a better way?

Or, do you just want to benefit from someone else\'s NRE and
try to enter a market \"on the cheap\"?

Nowadays, there is much less variety in designs. There are fewer
processor families, fewer *approaches* to writing code, more standard
libraries, a relatively few set of \"programmable\" hardware devices,
canned OS\'s, etc.

So, it\'s no surprise that you can find tools that can recognize
the compiler that was used on a particular project (there are
even technologies that can identify which programmer wrote the
code!), decompile FPGA bitstreams, etc.

So, while projects are bigger, the tools to \"crack\" them are, as well!

And, many products aren\'t particularly difficult to understand at
a technical level. It\'s just that someone else had the idea BEFORE
you!

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

torsdag den 4. maj 2023 kl. 17.24.48 UTC+2 skrev Phil Hobbs:

On 2023-05-04 10:52, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 5/4/2023 16:44, Fred Bloggs wrote:
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:54:04 AM UTC-4, Ricky wrote:
I know that some regions provide the right of a consumer to reverse
engineer products they have bought. As an example, the EU provides
for this right. In the US, not so much. If a supplier provides a
board level component to an OEM, the consumer has the right to
reverse engineer the product supplied. How does this convey to the
board level component?

For example, a product is sold for office use, which contains a small
circuit board to convert power from the 12VDC input, to the various
voltages required. This power circuit board contains a CPU/DSP, which
controls the power conversions, and communicates with the rest of the
system to enable/disable sections, and report status.

Will this power circuit board, being made by a company separate from
the OEM supplying the product, be under obligation to allow reverse
engineering of its product? If so, is this true, even if the product
is not produced in the EU?

Is there any way for the manufacturer of the power circuit board to
prevent legal reverse engineering of their product in the EU?

Likewise, what rights apply to a similar situation, where the IP
under question is in a chip level device? Is this any different? It
hard to imagine a chip level device being reverse engineered by an
end user.

You can\'t reverse engineer something you couldn\'t forward engineer.

Most certainly so. If you have the knowledge to reverse engineer
something you will need less time/effort to forward engineer it.

Most attempts at reverse engineering come from people who just don\'t
know how much they don\'t know in order to do it. I have had a few
such attempts at some of our products, some have wasted years trying
in vain.

Funny how those big-ass reverse engineering houses stay alive, isn\'t it?

e.g. TechInsights in Ottawa

https://www.semiconductor-digest.com/techinsights-takes-reverse-engineering-into-the-cloud/

the big car manufacturer also tear apart competitor cars, down to how many welds where and how