Targeted Recognition and Analysis of Circuitry Elements (TRACE)

Today, reverse engineering embedded systems – in particular, for the sake of cybersecurity analysis – tends to be prohibitively expensive, primarily because of the amount of expert manual labor and/or very expensive application-specific equipment involved. In an ongoing DARPA-funded SBIR Phase II effort, titled Robotic Analysis System for Physically Uncovering the Technology INside (RASPUTIN), Red Balloon Security, Inc (RBS) is advancing reverse engineering and cybersecurity analysis at scale through development and demonstration of human-on-the-loop automation for whole-device analysis of embedded device hardware. Specifically, RASPUTIN is developing a robotic system and control software, designed to enable examination of printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) using a variety of sensors – such as high-resolution camera, laser-based 3d mapping, and thermal and electromagnetic scanning. RBS proposes a two-Phase SBIR effort to develop the Targeted Recognition and Analysis of Circuitry Elements (TRACE) system capable of taking the digital scans produced by the existing RASPUTIN system and using them to identify the key PCBA components and trace their connectivity, thus addressing a significant aspect of the PCBA reverse engineering that is not being addressed by the existing RASPUTIN effort.