Confusion is the name of the game in outwitting microchip reverse engineers
- Daniel Bardsley for thenational.ae January 19th, 2014
- Source: http://www.thenational.ae/uae/confusion-is-the-name-of-the-game-in-outwitting-microchip-reverse-engineers
...Dr Sinanoglu and a team of co-researchers at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) recently revealed details of a method aimed at stopping reverse engineers in their tracks.
To prevent copiers from working out how a circuit works, engineers can insert what are known as “camouflaged gates”. In simple terms, these are fake electrical connections within the circuit designed to act as decoys to hackers.
“Chips consist of multiple different layers. There are contact points where layers touch … An attacker cannot see what’s inside that contact. We create contacts in such a way that certain contacts are real, but certain contacts deceive,” says Dr Sinanoglu.
