This new new chip will self-destruct in less than 10 seconds Engineers at Xerox PARC have developed a prototype chip capable of self-destructing upon command. The Mission Impossible-style integrated circuit might be used for applications such as the storage of encryption keys. The chip is fabricated on a Gorilla Glass substrate and capable of shattering on demand into thousands of …
Have you never wandered along a sandy beach and actually looked down? You can, in the well settled parts of the world usually find small pieces of glass that have been worn smooth by weathering.
Weathering is what you are thinking of. Those shards will weather into sand in next to no time.
in organic soil a glass shard is as sharp as new after 50 years
Strangely, not all glass is exactly the same. The broken glass shards of your anecdote - very likely untempered soda-lime-silica glass, probably from a curved sheet at least a couple of millimeters thick - might not be quite the same as pieces of shattered highly-tempered, very thin sheets of aluminosilicate.
For that matter, around these parts, there's enough sand in the soil and movement of it (thanks to high rainfall) that even common glass shards generally get the sharp edges worn off pretty quickly. Not that that's at all relevant to the glass discussed by the article. Might as well complain about the sharp edges on tin lids.
Just because you didn't pay your Office 365 subscription
Correction:
Just because in the light of propriatary and confidential information gathering acquired in the licence evaluation process, the operational environment was found to display certain characteristics consistant with typical breach of the terms and conditions.
Naturally, you can appeal and / or litigate at any stage once the 3... 2... 1... 0 has been executed. Have a nice day!
...or you could just buy a RunCore SSD. For years now, actually. Those chips look pretty busted to me even without turning into dust....
It's a new use for a very old technology. If you drip molten glass into water you get a frozen drop with a long tail. The drop's body is extremely tough. You can pound on it with a hammer. But break off the (very) fragile tail, and the whole drop disintegrates into tiny fragments. Google "Prince Rupert's Drop".
I was wondering whether there's any reason to make chips for chip-and-PIN cards which disintegrate if anyone tries to extract them from the card?
Nothing, if that fits your threat model.
Here's an attack branch that's satisfied by the glass chip, but not by your suggestion: attacker disconnects chip from power supply and then grinds top off packaging, as is (or was; dunno what the kids do these days) SOP for reverse-engineering a chip. With the power supply disconnected, it'll be hard for the self-destruct to get the amperage to destroy the chip.
The glass chip could have a small power supply embedded in the packaging - a capacitor, probably - that's sufficient to trigger its self-destruction. The key in the article is "a small current". You might be able to do it with ambient light. Or a chemical reaction using substances layered into the packaging material.
The point is that it's useful to be able to self-destruct using a small energy input, because it's easier for attackers to remove large energy inputs.
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