The Hunt For The Kill Switch

  • Authors:
  • S. Adee

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Spectrum
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

This paper has described the issues on electronic circuits which are made for military equipments.The DoD of U.S. recently launched its most ambitious program yet to verify the integrity of the electronics that will underpin future additions to its arsenal. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's R&D wing, and released details about a three-year initiative it calls the Trust in Integrated Circuits program. The findings from the program could give the military and defense contractors who make sensitive microelectronics like the weapons systems for the F-35 a guaranteed method of determining whether their chips have been compromised. The Trust program started its prequalifying rounds by sending to three contractors four identical versions of a chip that contained unspecified malicious circuitry, though U.S. military consumes only 1% of world's integrated circuits.