alt Hacker NewsI think this is a very astute comment.
It reminded me that for a while all SIM everywhere seemed to come from one european chip plant, although now I say it I wonder if they were just the assembly & packaging and fabrication was offshore?
In both cases (tpm and sim) the cynic would say it's only deciding which economy owns the back-door.
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formerly_proven • yesterday at 8:26 PM
You are probably referring to NXP (formerly Philips) and Infineon (formerly Siemens), both of which have produced crypto processors, smartcards (including SIMs) and other secure elements for a really long time. Infineon is/was actually a really common supplier for the little 20-pin TPM/LPC modules.
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It was Gemplus. The backstory about how CIA and NSA got control over it is fascinating.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemalto#Gemplus>