Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU as a "virtual smart card"?

["Bud P. Bruegger" <bruegger@ancitel.it>]

> Well if you look at intel's current wireless chips, they have some
> firmware that runs on them, but because the instruction set of that
> processor is secret and the addresses of all the devices inside the
> chip are secret, it would be very hard to reverse engineer the
> firmware and hence make changes to it.  Not impossible of course, but
> very hard.
> 
> To some extent, if you want it secret, make a custom chip, not
> software. Software can't be secret, only hard to get at.

Hmmm.  Hardware would surely be the best solution.  A hard smartcard
and lots of headaches are gone.  I'm looking at a temporary solution
where smartcards have not arrived yet (too slow, not in this year's
budget..) and where username pwd is an even worse idea ;-)

And soft credentials are difficult...

The plain old PKCS#12 would not survive a day in today's malware
environment.  It wouldn't even be worth-while using it..

I'm looking for a pragmatic way of getting something useful, very
difficult to exploit by malware and reasonably hard to not be figured
out right off.

Working on this, I feel like someone who wants to invent a perpetuum
mobile...

I'm wondering whether there would be a way of finding some framework in
which "puzzles" can be plugged in that bring the necessary obfuscation
and delay of being cracked.  The framework should use one puzzle to
protect the next (sequential instead of parallel cracking)...  

any ideas whether such a thing is even possible?

best cheers
-b