&gt; <i>You just need to disable the mechanism that wipes the device</i><p>Sure, to resist microscopic attacks, an IC must assert logical integrity to itself i.e. that the gates &amp; wires are not compromised by a microscopic attack.<p>But just because you and I haven&#x27;t imagined it, doesn&#x27;t mean some kind of internal canary can&#x27;t exist.  Your naive code (below) of a counter might instead be based on quantum cryptography, or on intrinsic properties of a function or algorithm which if compromised the SE cannot function at all.<p>The existence of one-time password schemes like S&#x2F;KEY gives me hope, since it is a sequence generator that simply doesn&#x27;t function without input of the correct next value (technically the previous value from the hash function). S&#x2F;KEY itself is not the answer (wrong UX and no intrinsically escalating timer), but I wanted to illustrate that you can generate a self-validating sequence without tracking integer position.<p>Apple apparently has a motive and the warchest for the R&amp;D.  If they&#x27;re hiring cryptographers (has anyone checked?), they&#x27;re acting on it.