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HOME >> ZEICHICK'S TAKE

Zeichick’s Take: Backdoors—at nanometer scales

By Alan Zeichick

October 29, 2009 — Can you trust your chips? Last week, I wrote about the potential for shenanigans with a new computer-controlled watt-hour meter that a local electric utility installed at my home. The worry: My bill might go up.

That, my friends, may only be the tip of the iceberg.

We’re all familiar with backdoors installed into software, such as secret root passwords or overrides built into payroll software. Many of those backdoors are urban legends, but I’ve encountered such things in real life. You probably have too.

What if backdoors are being installed into your nation’s defense systems at the hardware level—secretly—by your enemies? While that sounds like the topic of a good science-fiction movie, it’s a not-too-far-fetched scenario.

On Monday, John Markoff of the New York Times wrote a cyberwar story called “Old Trick Threatens the Newest Weapons.” He writes that only about 2% of the chips used in American military equipment are manufactured in secure facilities, and that the other 98% might hide kill switches or backdoor access points.

“As advanced systems like aircraft, missiles and radars have become dependent on their computing capabilities, the specter of subversion causing weapons to fail in times of crisis, or secretly corrupting crucial data, has come to haunt military planners. The problem has grown more severe as most American semiconductor manufacturing plants have moved offshore,” Markoff writes.

Could attempts to subvert those chips be detected? Not a chance. Markoff writes chillingly: “Cyberwarfare analysts argue that while most computer security efforts have until now been focused on software, tampering with hardware circuitry may ultimately be an equally dangerous threat. That is because modern computer chips routinely comprise hundreds of millions, or even billions, of transistors. The increasing complexity means that subtle modifications in manufacturing or in the design of chips will be virtually impossible to detect.”

The thought that an enemy of your country could shut down or take over one of your nation’s weapon systems is terrible to contemplate. The threat, however, isn’t merely to defense systems or military equipment. What would be the economic implications of secret kill switches built into business-grade network servers or network routers? How about remote subversion of consumer-grade mobile phones, laptop computers or automobile chips?

And to think I was worried about my electricity meter.

Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/zeichick. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.

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Comments

10/30/2009 11:55:20 AM EST

temp fix: Design a chip testing machine, which randomly samples 20% of all chips used. Real Fix, do our own chips. Why do we leave it to China when we need jobs here? Purified Silicon is just a Brown's Gas Torch away, and the rest is a fairly automated process. China had already embraced Brown's Gas Technology (Hydrogen and Oxygen gases coming out a torch head), so purified silicon was already in their hands. (BTW it will also take care of spent nuclear fuel, and mines gold without any chemicals and a far greater return of ore from the rock). America has always bootstrapped itself, why not in such a delicate and dangerous area. Lets make our own (and not on the coasts)!! ... There are some awesome supplies of gorgeous quartz (massive amounts ?? couldn't say but what I saw was nearly pure already) between Winnemucca NV (Gold Town) and Burns Oregon. While you are making silicon you can branch out into growing crystals ... a new field which will need lots of supply.

United StatesSally A

11/03/2009 03:08:39 PM EST

You can't start worrying about the hardware, the softWare in place already has permanent issues. If it has a JVM, ACPI, and uses any variation of "C" it is not only completely vulnerable, probably already affected, and the worst part is once afflicted the computer is the one responsible for reporting everything you should know about.

United StatesShaykers

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