Technology for Trusted Circuits

Integrated circuits (ICs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and systems-on-chip (SoCs) are used in a wide spectrum of vital DOD equipment. The vast majority of these chips are manufactured overseas at untrusted locations. While a chip design can be verified by US personnel, a window of opportunity exists for opposing forces during the fabrication stage. An attacker can potentially insert additional circuitry which could add to, disable, or modify the function of a device. Due to the cost effectiveness of COTS devices, one cannot solve this problem by manufacturing these chips in a trusted foundry. Luna Innovations developed a method to authenticate the integrity of fabricated circuits and plans to verify the process during this SBIR program. A feasibility study, vulnerability report, and various qualification metrics will also be addressed.