https://ryancor.medium.com/hardware-trojans-under-a-microscope-bf542acbcc29
While the security industry generally focuses on software cyber attacks, we can't forget the security impact of lower level hardware flaws, such as those that affect semiconductors. The surface for silicon level attacks has widened over the past several years; as integrated circuit (IC) fabrication evolves for increasingly advanced microelectronics, the risk of flaws creeping into these complex systems also increases.
This article gives an overview and background of Hardware Trojans including netlists, die preparations, electron microscope images, and circuit testing. We will additionally be making our own physical layout design of a Hardware Trojan that will be analyzed using Klayout.
(Score: 2) by hopdevil on Thursday February 09, @04:25AM (3 children)
I think non controversial articles like this are excellent, but don't seem to have many comments.
I miss using verilog, those were better times.
I still doubt finding malicious intent on circuits is a total crap shoot and blue teamers have no chance in hell at finding trojans.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09, @07:01AM (2 children)
Yeah the stuff doesn't actually have to use much power.
I remember when Bloomberg was running some articles claiming that China was adding tiny chips to motherboards to hack/spy on stuff.
https://gizmodo.com/the-most-infamous-story-in-tech-returns-with-new-detail-1846258095 [gizmodo.com]
But I didn't think that made sense because why should you add small more noticeable chips when you could just put modified versions of the bigger chips. This way the motherboard would look exactly like it should when examined optically without removing the chips or peeling/skimming off the top of the chips. To tell the difference you'd have to thoroughly examine the chips themselves and this is harder.
I dunno about now, but in the past "chip count" was a thing even if it was just for cutting costs, so if there's say 251 items on the motherboard instead of 250 someone would notice.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 09, @11:50AM (1 child)
Or do it like Intel: Put it openly on your chip and sell it as a feature. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10, @01:43AM
It was already in the name: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intel [wiktionary.org]
Seriously though, they're not China though so it's OK.