Analog backdoor on a chip is security nightmare

Analog Attack or A2 is a frightening concept considering that current security measures are ill-equipped to detect them. Image INQUIRER.net

There are certain procedures developed for plugging up security holes in software. But what if the backdoor was already set up somewhere in the hardware itself?

According to Wired, researchers at  the University of Michigan have gone beyond imagining the nightmare scenario and actually created one. The study won the best paper award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Symposium on Privacy and Security. The researchers detailed that their creation was a proof-of-concept regarding the security risks of hardware backdoors.

Saboteurs can insert microscopic hardware backdoors into processors and current security protocols would be none the wiser. It can even be done by a single employee in a chip factory. All that’s left is to run a series of commands on the “marked” processor and a hacker can gain full control over the operating system. Google engineer Jonatan Hunger said, “This is the most demonically clever computer security attack I’ve seen in years.”

The researchers call this backdoor: A2, which stands for Ann Arbor or “Analog Attack.”

At present, the security industry does not have the proper methods of detecting a threat such as this. It is basically out of the scope of their assumptions as to how a chip’s digital functions can be sabotaged. The researchers also claim that their backdoor is so minute that visual analysis and other current techniques won’t be enough to accurately pinpoint the A2.

Despite the obvious danger that their proof-of-concept poses for the future of computing security, the researchers insist that they created A2 to detect and prevent hardware backdoors. Here is the full paper for Analog Attack. Alfred Bayle