2026-10-30 23:29 UTC
This was a patent by Siemens for a copy-protection scheme where there's a descrambler in front of the prefetch queue.
Each CPU would have a unique permutation - this means that software could be tied to a specific CPU.
Just scrambling 16 bits gives you something like 16! = 20,922,789,888,000 possibilities, but this system also lets you invert bits too, so ... it's a lot.
It's also cryptographically chickenshit, so it would have been cracked immediately
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4633388A/en
Replies (1)
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@tom_verbeure@mastodon.social 2026-10-31 00:35
@gloriouscow@oldbytes.space DisplayPort does the same thing. For GPU to monitor communication, there is HDCP, but for communication within the monitor, from scaler board to LCD panel, it uses eDP. HDCP would be too costly for that, so they use ASSR: alternate scrambler seed reset.