From The Blog

Displaying items by tag: FPGA

broken-lockSo two days ago, we reported on a potential issue with some FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) ASICs from Microsemi/Actel; namely the ProASIC3. The issue was discovered by a group of researchers that were looking into a potential security risk with these programmable components. What they claimed to have found was a hidden backdoor that had its own key set which could allow for access into the chip for readback, re-programming and potentially wiping the instructions from the chip itself. You can read the original article here if you have not already

Published in News

broken-lockSo what is more frightening than having a worm or a virus infect your network? How about a virus or worm that can infect the hardware that controls your network. According researchers at Cambridge this could be possible through the use of hard coded back doors in control processors. Although the idea of being able to reprogram the microcode inside computer chips is nothing new it has never been viewed as a threat before. After all most companies are very careful about allowing someone other than themselves to have access to the paths that would allow the original code to be overwritten.

Published in News