Indian-origin researcher developing chip that stops Trojan

Trojan horses are dangerous for people. Due to a lot of outsourcing and several phases of manufacture of devices, anyone can install a Trojan horse at anyphase. They can allow attackers to infiltrate electronic devices and steal important information. They can do a lot of damage to not only normal people but also to healthcare devices, public infrastructure and financial, military, or government electronics.

In order to tackle these viruses, Siddharth Garg, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering along with fellow researchers are working a new solution. They are making a chip which has an embedded module that proves that its calculations are correct combine with an external module that can validate the proof of the first module.

Software viruses are usually easy to fix. However, deliberately inserted hardware defects are cannot be found that easily. If there is a secretly inserted back door in a device. An attacker could alter or take over a device or system. With the help of Garg’s configuration, where they use something called called “verifiable computing” (VC). In this, they monitor, chip’s performance to spot telltale signs of Trojans.

Such ability to verify hardware is quite crucial in this electronic age. This is because, many companies stopped doing all stages of manufacture themselves. They offshore design, prototype and manufacture to different places. Sometimes, security is hard to maintain in offshore foundries.

With the help of the system proposed by Garg and his colleagues, the verifying processor can be made separately from the chip. According to Garg, having an external verification unit made from a trusted source, lets companies to maintain security while going to offshore foundries. This way the chip not only has the circuitry-performing computations but also a module that creates security. The chip designer can go to a trusted foundry to build a separate, less complex module. It will be used to validate everything by the internal module of the untrusted chip.

Image Reference: Theworldofwindows