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Stopping Hardware Trojans in Their Tracks

A few adjustments could protect chips against malicious circuitry

By Subhasish Mitra, H.-S. Philip Wong & Simon Wong - The Spectrum, Jan. 20, 2015 – 

Long ago, the story goes, Greek soldiers tried for 10 years to conquer the city of Troy. Eventually, they departed, leaving behind a large wooden horse, apparently as a gift. The Trojans pulled the beautiful tribute inside. Later, a group of Greek soldiers slipped out of the horse and opened the gates for their compatriots, who easily sacked the sleeping city.

Nowadays, some 3,000 years on, a Trojan is a seemingly innocuous piece of software that actually contains malicious code. Security companies are constantly developing new tests to check for these threats. But there is another variety of Trojan-the "hardware Trojan"-that has only started to gain attention, and it could prove much harder to thwart.

A hardware Trojan is exactly what it sounds like: a small change to an integrated circuit that can disturb chip operation. With the right design, a clever attacker can alter a chip so that it fails at a crucial time or generates false signals. Or the attacker can add a backdoor that can sniff out encryption keys or passwords or transmit internal chip data to the outside world.

There's good reason to be concerned. In 2007, a Syrian radar failed to warn of an incoming air strike; a backdoor built into the system's chips was rumored to be responsible. Other serious allegations of added circuits have been made. And there has been an explosion in reports of counterfeit chips, raising questions about just how much the global supply chain for integrated circuits can be trusted.

If any such episode has led to calamity, the role of the Trojan has been kept secret. Indeed, if any potentially threatening hardware Trojans have been found, the news hasn't yet been made public. But clearly, in the right place a compromised chip could scuttle antimissile defenses, open up our personal data to the world, or down a power plant or even a large section of a power grid.


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