Stealth Attacks on PCBs: An Experimental Plausibility Analysis

This paper reports - inspired by the Bloomberg article "The Big Hack" - on experiments researching the possibilities to manipulate Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) and the chances that such a manipulation can and will be detected. We used non-functional devices to showcase manipulations and ar...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in2024 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR) pp. 905 - 912
Main Authors Kabin, Ievgen, Schaeffner, Jan, Sigourou, Alkistis, Petryk, Dmytro, Dyka, Zoya, Klein, Dominik, Freud, Sven, Langendoerfer, Peter
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 02.09.2024
Subjects
"The Big Hack"
"The Long Hack"
Bloomberg
Chips Act
Optical imaging
PCB manipulation
Pins
Power supplies
Printed circuits
supply chain security
Supply chains
trustworthy IT devices
Ultraviolet sources
Wires
X-raying
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:This paper reports - inspired by the Bloomberg article "The Big Hack" - on experiments researching the possibilities to manipulate Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) and the chances that such a manipulation can and will be detected. We used non-functional devices to showcase manipulations and are providing optical and X-ray pictures to illustrate how good or difficult it is to detect such manipulations. We researched hiding dies in parts of a PCB and under a BGA package. Our experiments clearly show that such manipulations are feasible and extremely hard to detect if done thoroughly.
DOI:10.1109/CSR61664.2024.10679465