Highlights
– Semiconductor manufacturers have increasingly off shored production to potential adversaries like China
– DARPA funds Trust in IC program designed to detect sabotaged circuits
– Sabotaged circuits could allow enemies to shut down US military weapons systems or eavesdrop on US government communications
As previously reported, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced the seizure of more than 400 pieces of Cisco network hardware with a retail value of more than US$76 million.
The purpose of these seizures was to prevent counterfeit and potentially unstable networking equipment from ending up in the hands of end users. There have been previous examples of catastrophic network failures caused by the failure of counterfeit network equipment.
Kill Switches and Backdoors
Although counterfeit network equipment would likely not be a suitable platform for placing a backdoor or creating a reliable kill switch in an enemies network, it is possible that a hostile nation-state could subvert the integrated circuit fabrication process and embed either a backdoor or a kill switch into integrated circuits destined for US military weapons and communications systems.
An effective kill switch secretly embedded into an integrated circuit would lay dormant until such a time that the switch was triggered and subsequently shutdown. As a result of this shutdown, the device reliant on the chip, such as a computer, would also cease to function. A malicious actor could trigger a kill switch remotely by simply sending the processor or chip a predefined byte sequence.
A backdoor, rather than shutdown the targeted chip, would allow a malicious actor to silently enter a targeted network and ex-filtrate sensitive without the targets knowledge.
Scope of the Threat
Integrated circuits composed of kill switches and backdoors present a significant threat to US military weapons and communications systems. For example, a hostile nation-state could in theory ground US military aircraft by killing circuits embedded in the avionics systems of military aircraft. Alternatively, hostile states could also in theory intercept and easily decrypt encrypted communications passing through systems relying on manipulated circuits with embedded backdoors.
As US semiconductor companies have increasingly moved the production of integrated circuits offshore to countries like China, defense officials have become progressively more concerned about the prospect that countries like China could surreptitiously reprogram integrated circuits destined for US military weapons and communications systems.
Trust in IC
In the last few years US defense officials have sought to counter this loss of control over the supply chain of integrated circuits through a number of initiatives. One such initiative is DARPA’s Trust in IC program. This program is designed to develop a reliable methodology for identifying rogue kill switches and backdoors inserted into integrated circuits.
Via the Trust in IC program DARPA has created a contest that will test competitor’s ability to detect manipulations in integrated circuits. DARPA hopes the winner of the competition will develop a system that will be able to reliable detect 90 percent of all sabotaged processors and circuits with as few false positives as possible.
Although it will likely take a number of years to develop a robust and stable system capable of detecting sabotaged chips, the Trust in IC program and others like it are vitally important as they further bolster our national security from external threats.
