Researchers reveal chips that commit ‘circuit suicide’ — self-destruction and counterfeit protection in one

SOURCE: Tom’s Hardware

As part of IEEE Spectrum’s coverage of security advances made at their International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) held last week, a team from the University of Vermont showed off a way to manufacture chips (like CPUs) that self-destruct when compromised. This doubles as both a security measure and an anti-counterfeiting measure, which is useful for vendors who wish to protect their designs.

The mechanism works by using physically unclonable functions (PUFs), which can create unique fingerprints for every chip. The PUF, as implemented by the University of Vermont team debuting this self-destruct mechanism, also comes with an extra bonus of two built-in methods of “circuit suicide.”

Both methods used pumped up voltages to the lines connecting to the encryption key. In the first method, this causes electromigration, a phenomenon where electricity blows metal atoms out of place, which causes voids and open circuits. The second method instead causes short-circuiting by subjecting transistors meant to operate at under 1V to 2.5V, which causes such rapid time-dependent dielectric breakdown (transistor aging) that the device is killed.