** 06-Apr-2019 Hardware Trojans
Let me add to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz's effusive praise of you.
That paper is quite a find. You must be really into this stuff.
However, I think some additional discussion is warranted. The paper
discusses implementing a Trojan (what I would call a "backdoor") by
means of a new technique that can't be detected using the optical
methods that have been used in the past to detect Trojans.
However, I get the impression that just around the corner is a new
method for detecting Trojans that will defeat this new technique.
Once such a Trojan is found, then there is irrefutable proof of the
existence of a backdoor with certainty.
The beauty of the software-only method that I described for
undetectable backdoors is that it can never be detected, even by more
powerful microscopes, or whatever, because the chip itself is
unchanged. There's nothing there to discover. The best that one can
do is reverse engineer the code, and what I'm saying is that a person
with the right skills can use cryptographic techniques to easily write
the code for a backdoor that cannot be detected until it's activated.
If the code is reverse engineered, it may be suspected that the
code is suspicious, but that's as far as it goes. Unlike the hardware
method, a software backdoor can never be proven with certainty.
At any rate, let's face it -- the Chinese military will have
thoroughly studied all the techniques, both software and hardware, and
will use any combination of them that will work.
And one day, at a time of the choosing of China's military,
much of the internet and many local networks will all shut
down, if they've been implemented using Huawei routers.