Countering the counterfeiters
18 May 2010
A new initiative, backed by a working product, aims to cut counterfeits and increase security by using its electronic fingerprint.
Counterfeiting is not a new problem and will, in some form or another, always be an unwelcome visitor to electronics, in the same way that drugs have infiltrated sport and greed will always rear its ugly head in politics. In the constant battle to stay a step ahead of the counterfeiters, a group of eight companies has launched the HIS Initiative to bring a new set of secure solutions to the market.
An estimated 10% of the global electronics market is lost to counterfeits and in some markets that figure can be far greater. One of these is the smart card driven pay-per-view TV market in Europe which is why it is one of the first markets that will benefit from the new HIS technology, as Daniel Schrobben, CEO of Intrinsic-ID (the managing sponsor of the HIS Initiative) described to me last week. With theft of service running at over 30% in the EU for pay-per-view TV services, Schrobben believes it is the perfect application to launch the secure HIS technology into.
HIS stands for Hardware Intrinsic Security. The key to HIS is the PUF - the physical unclonable function (PUF) – which is a physical structure embedded in an IC that is very hard to clone due to its unique micro or nano-scale properties that originate from inherent deep-submicron manufacturing process variations. PUFs enable the new HIS approach, as PUFs are used as the hardware from which the ‘security’ key is extracted.
PUFs are considered unclonable because it is extremely difficult to make either a hardware clone, a mathematical model of the behaviour of the structure or a software program that can compute the response to a challenge in a reasonable amount of time. To do any of these things, attackers would have to know the locations and properties of all the impurities in the silicon with very high accuracy. Since physical systems contain a very large number of impurities, this becomes a very time-consuming, infeasible task.
In practice, using HIS essentially involved embedding a relatively small amount of hardware IP into every chip, each of which will be individual and secure. I intend to fully cover the technical details of how it works in a future issue of EPD magazine, but with one eye on brevity for this column, I will constrain myself to a few comments about its application.
First thing of note is that it has potential for many applications and in any active device. Irrespective of the size of the device it will use about 15k logic gates and a limited amount of SRAM, so in most cases this will not affect the performance or processing power available.
Another interesting thing is that the initial eight members of the Initiative includes not only some big industry names, but also a good cross-section of the electronics design, manufacture and application chain – with Cisco Systems, NXP, IMEC and TSMC being among the founder members. More, incidentally, are welcome to join. To find out more visit www.hisinitiative.org
It is also a solution that requires no further componentry – it is just a block of IP – and is potentially an inexpensive solution for all markets. While set top boxes are the first target market, there is obvious potential in any sector where there is either a proliferation of counterfeit components, or the application involves handling secure information (like personal medical or military). Schrobben even suggested food labelling could be an option, but I imagine that the price points would need to be very low to make this realistic.
Overall, an interesting progression in the battle against the forces of evil. Maybe, if it cuts down on 30% piracy in pay per view television it will start to become cheaper for the rest of us as well!
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