Принципы и возможности изучения топологии готовых схем

29 May 2012
There was a lot of rumour on the Internet and in various blogs claiming that we found that 'Chinese manufacturers putting backdoors in American chips'. This is not true as anyone can see drafts of our papers which we had to release yesterday to clear the issue with being accused of making false claims. It is the US manufacturer Actel who inserted the backdoor at the gates level of JTAG controller in ProASIC3, Igloo, Fusion and SmartFusion devices. Moreover, the traces of the backdoor can be found in the development software Libero through simple Windows XP Search for particular bits in standard STAPL file. With the backdoor key you can extract the IP (FROM, ARRAY/bitstream, NVM/NFMB) or even reprogram the factory backdoor key and make your own key.
We never said the Chinese have put a backdoor inside Actel's chips and it does not say so in our papers. It is as though people have put 2+2 together and made 4 or 5 or 6 depending on what their agenda is. We believe that other chips will have backdoors and since a US chip has them and you can do lots of things that give you a vast amount of control over the devices then is there any reason to suggest other manufacturers have not done the same. The US military have been looking at the issues of hardware assurance and part authenticity for a good number of years.
Also that fact that since it is possible now to scan for backdoors in a way that was not possible before, people will start to take a look at this area whether to use it to remove IP or to use it for other purposes.