1. Forum
  2. Usenet
  3. COMP.SYS.IBM.PS2.HARDWARE

  • Cryptic messages

    From Louis Ohland@21:1/5 to RickE on Wed Oct 12 07:24:12 2022
    Any sort of press on these adapters?

    What systems did they ship with? I assume banking.

    This will be a job for the Internet Archive, an urn of black coffee, and
    a carton of cigarettes. (I don't smoke, BTW)

    RickE wrote:
    On Monday, October 10, 2022 at 1:59:03 PM UTC-4, Louis Ohland wrote:
    Suppose the 47xx cards were MUCH cheaper?

    No, while the i860/i960 did an acceptable job with DES, they didn't have enough oomph for other crypto algorithms, so Charlotte needed to produce a dedicated crypto processor, and those have always been expensive -- and most of those machine types
    needed to ship in packages with cooling packs to make sure that they didn't get too hot during shipment, you had to make sure that the on-board battery packs didn't get too discharged, and you needed good airflow in the server to keep them happy.


    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RickE@21:1/5 to Louis Ohland on Sat Oct 15 14:50:16 2022
    On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 8:24:07 AM UTC-4, Louis Ohland wrote:
    Any sort of press on these adapters?

    What systems did they ship with? I assume banking.

    Not much press, they are specialty products -- the folks who are looking for high-speed crypto adapters buy them, they're too expensive for general use and the software setup is a bit complicated. They were used on certain System x and System p (RISC)
    servers (only the ones with really good airflow, had to be certified), but mostly used in the System z mainframes. Yes, the big banks and insurance companies bought them, as did certain 3-letter agencies -- anyone interested in encrypting/decrypting all
    data on the fly at full speed. One common use for these HSMs is to generate and hold the "master keys" for a large enterprise, and then they are used to sign the smart cards that are given to employees with defined security roles (done in a secure
    location typically with two "master signers", just like you see in the spy thriller movies).

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)