In the first article in this series, we did an overview of backdoor hardware attacks and the potential threats they represent, the second article covered the means and motivations, and the last installment looked at the dreaded Rakshasa malware. Now we’ll turn our attention to backdoors inserted at gate level.
We’ve discussed the possibility of designing backdoors based on supplementary circuits, electronics component substitution and firmware. But the research is also evaluating more sophisticated methods based on the manipulation of dopant chemical elements.
Recently, a team of experts, composed by researchers Georg T. Becker, Francesco Ragazzoni, Christof Paar and Wayne P. Burleson, published a study on stealth dopant-level hardware Trojans.
The study describes how it is possible to conduct a hardware-based attack introducing legitimate circuits that aren’t detectable as Trojans.
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/backdoors-hardware-attacks-backdoors-inserted-gate-level-4/