Researchers claim Chinese backdoors in US military chips

A Cambridge University research team has claimed proof that Chinese manufacturers put “backdoors” or unauthorised access mechanisms into electronic chips used by the US military.
Using “breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology”, researcher Sergei Skorobogatov said his team had found a “previously unknown backdoor” inserted by the Chinese manufacturer of a chip used by the military.
The chip was encrypted and locked by a key that his team was able to extract, effectively allowing it to be reprogrammed at will or disabled.
Skorobogatov did not name the manufacturer but said the chip’s use was prevalent in many systems used by the military, ranging from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. He said the backdoor could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet-type weapon that could attack millions of systems.
But security consultancy Errata Security combatted Skorobogatov’s claims, arguing the proclaimed backdoor was a known method for debugging the chip
www.itnews.com.au/News/302705,researchers-claim-chinese-backdoors-in-us-military-chips.asp

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *