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Identifying Compromised Integrated Circuits

Integrated circuits (ICs or 'chips') are the brains for virtually everything electronic, and at the Center for Security, Testing, and Reliability (CSTAR), University of Connecticut associate professor Mohammad Tehranipoor and his research team are developing innovative techniques for identifying compromised chips. Dr. Tehranipoor discusses two major thrusts of his research: the detection of so-called hardware 'Trojans' in ICs, and the detection of recycled chips, which may find their way into products such as automotive electronics - where their early expiration can have disastrous consequences.

Topics:
Aerospace Automotive Aviation Board-Level Electronics Electronic Components Electronics & Computers Manufacturing & Prototyping Semiconductors & ICs Test & Measurement Transportation

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    Transcript

    00:00:01 [Music] over the past um 10 to 12 years uh many of our leading semiconductor companies um have become fabulous in other words they don't fabricate the chips inside us anymore a lot of security issues are associated with the there's a lot of vulnerabilities in the way this this design and and Fabrication is

    00:00:37 [Music] happening so microchips or or what is known as integrated circuits or or or ic's could be basically going through various countries uh to be designed and then eventually goes to some other countries to be fabricated package tested and then goes into the uh electronic uh uh component supply chain think about mil military devices they're

    00:01:20 using uh many of these hyrid uh uh uh integrated circuits and uh imagine that some of these uh um uh integrated circuits are being being um designed and fabricated in some other countries but being used in in in in missiles here it's it's frightening in csar which uh uh um stands for Center for uh security testing and reliability we uh basically

    00:01:49 address various issues um issues such as um development of um uh uh quality test for for U in ices each IC must go through a rigorous test before it actually shipped into the market we also Focus quite a bit on the security issues related to integrated circuits um uh using highly specialized equipments uh we test the chips to ensure they meet the required

    00:02:21 specification uh this device is called automatic test equipment um it allows us to be able to test ic's um uh functionally and structure on it it uh it has 52 pins that means it can test chips that have up to 52 inputs and outputs and each of these pins that you can see here they can be configured and controlled and be able to connect to

    00:02:46 every one of the pins that we have on this chip to be able to send in data and receiving data from the chip and help us to be able to perform our test procedures so I'll Focus first on the on the hardware troons or or or what is known as malicious inclusions in our circuit the chips are being designed in various sites design sites distributed across the Glo Hardware Trojan can be

    00:03:13 inserted into an IC during uh uh any step of the design process and Fabrication hard troan can act like a silicon Time Bomb It could potentially destroy an electronic system and it's in the field or it can also act as a back door where it can send out secret information to adversary to detect Hardware Trojans we develop uh um novel methodologies that

    00:03:39 can extract circuit parameters and by analyzing those circuit parameters we will be able to identify uh circuits that are being tampered in addition we develop novel sensors sensors are inserted into the chips any changes to any part of the circuit I could potentially impact sensors specification and by analyzing ing those specification we would be able

    00:04:02 to say with a high confidence whether those chips have been tampered system integration relies on high quality integrated circuits but today it is very difficult to say whether the chips that we have we put in our our systems are are recycled or not whether they counterfeit part or not in about 5 to 10 years electronic e-way could potentially

    00:04:31 be one of the major issues that world breeders have to deal with recycle IC is pose security and reliability issues to our electronic systems so take automo automotive industry as an example um automotive automotive industry has a strict requirement of at least 15 years of Lifetime operation within the specification for a chip but if a

    00:04:57 recycled chip comes into the supply chain and potentially be used in anti-lock breaking system or an airbag controller system and if the chip has already been used for a couple of few years and considering the fact that these chips have been taken off of this scrap board uh under very harsh condition which potentially further degrade their performance this could

    00:05:19 have a catastrophic impact and impa could potentially cause loss of human lives so we're talking about the global tsunami of discarded electronic product an amount estimated at tens of millions of tons anal the used chips find their way into Electronic Component supply chain and from there into new electronic products as for recycle ices we develop

    00:05:47 methodologies to uh be able to measure the change that are happening in the uh I specification this is one of the IC that we actually um try to test on and uh here we have sensors in the chips the sensors in the chip will tell us that whether the chip has been used if the chip is being used in a in in an electronic device before it has

    00:06:10 experienced some aging and by by measuring the specification of the sensors in the chip we will find out whether the chip has already been used or not and if it is for approximately how long this chip has been [Music] used [Music] he

    00:07:00 [Music] [Laughter] [Music]