Get best of the week

The dangers of “burning” chips

image

Fake semiconductor chips result in large cash losses and endanger human lives. How to distinguish fake from genuine?

According to Industry Week, in 2019 the global fake semiconductor chip market was valued at $ 75 billion . This market is especially visible in government and defense sectors. According to a U.S. government report, more than 1 million counterfeit electronic components were used in 1800 cases involving military aircraft and missiles.

Counterfeit chips were one of the key surfaces for cyber attacks, and that is what Warren Savage spoke of in his programming speech at DesignCon 2020. Such counterfeit chips are a serious problem for the semiconductor, automotive, and consumer industries. So, for example, a fake chip in a tank can transmit information about the payload to the enemy. A malicious code in a fake chip can block the air supply to the airliner. A chip made by cybercriminals can be used to turn off a car if a ransomware virus enters the system.

To learn more about this growing issue, Design News met with Paul Karatsuba, senior product marketing director at Rambus Security. The following is part of the conversation.

Design News: Tell us how to fake semiconductor chips?

image Paul Karatsuba: Counterfeiting chips can be carried out in various ways and take various forms. I will talk about some of them. Please note that the term “intruder” as used here refers to all people who produce fakes.

  • - . , . , , . , , , . , , , . , , , , .
  • , , . , . , , «» . OEM, . : .
  • . , . OEM- , , , , , «» .
  • «» . , , , . , ( , ) . , ( 15-20 ) (5-7 ).

Design News: What is the danger of counterfeit parts for chip designers?

Paul Karatsuba: The danger of counterfeit parts for chip designers lies in the loss of revenue and reputation as the manufacturer of the original chips. The main danger lies in the system in which the chip is placed.

Fake chips can function just like a new original chip. However, in reality there is no reliable way to find out how they will work.

Chips from the gray market may function in the same way as the original ones, but since they are not sold by the OEM and have no guarantee, there is no certainty about how they will work. The operation of chips assembled after reverse engineering is even more difficult to predict. As a rule, they cannot be visually identified, and there is no way to understand how fake chips will work in the system until it is too late. Fake chips can filter data by simulating normal operation. They can also damage data, disable the chip, and all this is not easy to detect in complex systems on a chip. Who made these chips? Why did they make them? Do fake chips really work the way original components should work? Or, more likely, does the chip malfunction? Is there a Trojan horse in the chips?designed to secretly compromise the system (s) around it? Do they pass on the information they collect to the attacker? Simply put, there is no way to identify them and there is no way to find out what they will do when they end up in a working system. Indeed, in many countries there are no legal penalties for either faking or selling a fake chip.

Design News: What are the most numerous and dangerous types of fake chips?

Paul Karatsuba: The most dangerous types of fake chips are those that can be intentionally forged - both at the design stage and in the factory, as well as those that are passed out as chips that have a higher class. For example, this could have caused the failure of several space missions, such as Russia's first attempt to send a probe to Mars.

It is difficult to determine which fake chips are more dangerous. The best way to answer this question is not only in the fake method, but also in the intended use of the chip. A fake chip inside an IoT home device is most likely a privacy risk in the first place. However, a fake chip inside a military device can pose a threat to national security. A counterfeit chip inside an unmanned vehicle endangers a person’s life.

Design News: What are the possible solutions?

Paul Karatsuba:Rambus believes that the best way to guarantee the authenticity of the chip is (a) setting unique and unchanging identifiers at the silicon stage (b) creating a cloud service that allows OEMs to verify the authenticity of the chip at any point in its life cycle, from anywhere in the world . The Rambus CryptoManager Infrastructure product does just that.


image

About ITELMA
- automotive . 2500 , 650 .

, , . ( 30, ), -, -, - (DSP-) .

, . , , , . , automotive. , , .

Read more useful articles:

More articles:


All Articles