Integrated circuits can be compromised using Undetectable hardware Trojans
Sep 21, 2013
A team of researchers from the U.S. and Europe has developed a Hardware Trojan , which is an undetectable to many techniques, raising the question on need of proper hardware qualification. They released a paper on stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans, showing how integrated circuits used in computers, military equipment and other critical systems can be maliciously compromised during the manufacturing process. " In this paper we propose an extremely stealthy approach for implementing hardware Trojans below the gate level, and we evaluate their impact on the security of the target device. Instead of adding additional circuitry to the target design, we insert our hardware Trojans by changing the dopant polarity of existing transistors. " states the paper abstract. The Scientists devised two such backdoors they said adversaries could feasibly build into processors to surreptitiously bypass cryptographic protections provided by the computer run...
