Huang: IRIS (Infra-Red, in situ) Project Updates
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Huang: IRIS (Infra-Red, in situ) Project Updates
The technique works because although silicon looks opaque at visible light, it is transparent starting at near-infrared wavelengths (roughly 1000 nm and longer). Today's commodity optics and CMOS cameras are actually capable of working with lights at this wavelength; thus, IRIS is a low-cost and effective technique for confirming the construction of chips down to block level. For example, IRIS can readily help determine if a chip has the correct amount of RAM, number of CPU cores, peripherals, bond pads, etc. This level of verification would be sufficient to deter most counterfeits or substitutions.
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Huang: IRIS (Infra-Red, in situ) Project Updates
Posted Mar 10, 2024 14:14 UTC (Sun) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
This is really cool. I suspect, however, that a determined attacker could still hide some malicious circuitry on the chip. For example, if a chip contains memory, it usually contains spare rows that can be activated by blowing fuses in case some cells are defective; this improves yield. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a "spare row" could actually be something malicious, though it'd be tough to make it look as regular as an actual spare row.
Back in 1999, I worked for a company that reverse-engineered ICs. I created a system called Integrated Circuit Imaging System (ICIS... in retrospect, an unfortunate name) with a microscope, camera, and precision computer-controlled stage that could image an entire chip and let people reverse-engineer it at the transistor level. That was back when feature sizes were significantly larger than visible light wavelength.
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