8.7 What Did the Authors Learn About Hardware Trojans in Microcircuits?
807
found and documented the fact of presence of a Trojan was widely promoted
both by the manufacturer and by the Department of Defence as a completely
safe microcircuits with multi-level protection from various external intrusions,
due to which it had been used for many years in multiple military systems, security systems of strategic objects (including nuclear objects), precision-guided
munition systems, etc. We present these facts in detail in Sect. 5.2; however, the
reader can easily find all the information on the Internet by simply typing “Sergei
Skorobogatov—Hardware Trojans“.
5. Immediately after publication of this fact, separate claims from top managers
that denied the very possibility of this fact appeared in press. Here, it would be
appropriate to recall the famous quote by Otto von Bis-mark: “Never believe
anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”
What did the authors not know about Trojans?
When starting to work on this book, the authors did not know the answer to the main
question: who and why decided to unleash this malware upon the world—it already
has too many destructive weapons that are capable of destroying every living thing
on Earth. They partially received the answer to this question, analyzing possibilities
and limitations of all these types of modern weapons; the results of this analysis
formed the basis for this chapter.
The answer is simple, and its essence consists in the fact that modern information
and technical weapons (cyberweapons) in combination with neural weapons are
capable of providing their owners with truly unlimited capabilities, simultaneously
avoiding the main disadvantages and limitations of all previously known types of
weapons.
What new things have authors learned about Trojans?
First of all, the authors learned the history of the emergence of the phenomenon of
software and hardware Trojans. Introduction of hardware Trojans in microcircuits
is only the natural evolution of this type of technical object due to general common
trends of the innovative development of science, society, and technology.
A brief description of the history of the development of this area of scientific and
technological progress (this is true, even if it sounds a bit strange) will look like this.
Historically, criminal groups (mafia, gangsters, yakuza, Russian mobsters) were
the first to use software and hardware Trojans in order to achieve their purely criminal
goals (illegal banking operations, destruction of evidence, unauthorized collection of
confidential information). The Interpol informed the corresponding special services
and information security agencies of large companies about the results of judicial
investigation of such actions.
Special services of the USA and the Great Britain were the first to assess both
the level of the emerging new threat and the genuinely unlimited possibilities of this
direction, which were later labeled cyberweapons by journalists. Of course, the US
intelligence services (CIA, NSA, FBI) informed the US Department of Defense, as
well as other government and commercial structures, about these threats.
807
found and documented the fact of presence of a Trojan was widely promoted
both by the manufacturer and by the Department of Defence as a completely
safe microcircuits with multi-level protection from various external intrusions,
due to which it had been used for many years in multiple military systems, security systems of strategic objects (including nuclear objects), precision-guided
munition systems, etc. We present these facts in detail in Sect. 5.2; however, the
reader can easily find all the information on the Internet by simply typing “Sergei
Skorobogatov—Hardware Trojans“.
5. Immediately after publication of this fact, separate claims from top managers
that denied the very possibility of this fact appeared in press. Here, it would be
appropriate to recall the famous quote by Otto von Bis-mark: “Never believe
anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”
What did the authors not know about Trojans?
When starting to work on this book, the authors did not know the answer to the main
question: who and why decided to unleash this malware upon the world—it already
has too many destructive weapons that are capable of destroying every living thing
on Earth. They partially received the answer to this question, analyzing possibilities
and limitations of all these types of modern weapons; the results of this analysis
formed the basis for this chapter.
The answer is simple, and its essence consists in the fact that modern information
and technical weapons (cyberweapons) in combination with neural weapons are
capable of providing their owners with truly unlimited capabilities, simultaneously
avoiding the main disadvantages and limitations of all previously known types of
weapons.
What new things have authors learned about Trojans?
First of all, the authors learned the history of the emergence of the phenomenon of
software and hardware Trojans. Introduction of hardware Trojans in microcircuits
is only the natural evolution of this type of technical object due to general common
trends of the innovative development of science, society, and technology.
A brief description of the history of the development of this area of scientific and
technological progress (this is true, even if it sounds a bit strange) will look like this.
Historically, criminal groups (mafia, gangsters, yakuza, Russian mobsters) were
the first to use software and hardware Trojans in order to achieve their purely criminal
goals (illegal banking operations, destruction of evidence, unauthorized collection of
confidential information). The Interpol informed the corresponding special services
and information security agencies of large companies about the results of judicial
investigation of such actions.
Special services of the USA and the Great Britain were the first to assess both
the level of the emerging new threat and the genuinely unlimited possibilities of this
direction, which were later labeled cyberweapons by journalists. Of course, the US
intelligence services (CIA, NSA, FBI) informed the US Department of Defense, as
well as other government and commercial structures, about these threats.