Defence Department Hunt for Kill Switches in High-End Microprocessors

The U.S. Department of Defense wants to know if chip makers are building remotely accessible kill switches into high-end microprocessors. These days, the U.S. military consumes only about 1 percent of the world's integrated circuits, and offshoring has begun to raise some alarms about the safety of the chips in the military's most mission-critical electronics.

Recognizing an enormous vulnerability, the DOD recently launched an extremely ambitious program to verify the integrity of the electronics that will underpin future additions to its arsenal. In December, the DOD's advanced-research wing released details about a three-year initiative it calls the Trust in Integrated Circuits program. The findings from the program could give the military--and defense contractors who make sensitive microelectronics like the weapons systems for the F-35--a guaranteed method of determining whether their chips have been compromised with a kill switch.

But how exactly would you kill an integrated switch, and for what purpose? In "The Hunt for the Kill Switch," IEEE Spectrum's Sally Adee reports on the methods that could kill a chip, the possible consequences, and the methods being devised to verify the Pentagon's most important microchips.

Posted April 30th,2008