Trunkneck’s Blog

The U.S. Department of Defense wants to know if chip makers are building remotely accessible kill switches into high-end microprocessors. These days, the U.S. military consumes only about 1 percent of the world’s integrated circuits, and offshoring has begun to raise some alarms about the safety of the chips in the military’s most mission-critical electronics.

Making the Government apprehensive perhaps?

Editor’s note: Actual advertisement

Recognizing an enormous vulnerability, the DOD recently launched an extremely ambitious program to verify the integrity of the electronics that will underpin future additions to its arsenal. In December, the DOD’s advanced-research wing released details about a three-year initiative it calls the Trust in Integrated Circuits program. The findings from the program could give the military–and defense contractors who make sensitive microelectronics like the weapons systems for the F-35–a guaranteed method of determining whether their chips have been compromised with a kill switch.

But how exactly would you kill an integrated switch, and for what purpose? In “The Hunt for the Kill Switch,” IEEE Spectrum’s Sally Adee reports on the methods that could kill a chip, the possible consequences, and the methods being devised to verify the Pentagon’s most important microchips.

We all know it’s possible….nothing is impossible as they say. It just depends how bad you need/want it to “Be”. Take Microsoft’s kill switch in Vista for example, yes one is software the other hardware but you get the idea. Some larger companies have taken the stance (For many years) that they own the company and therefore forever own the product. What they fail to realize is, we bought that piece of software/hardware and we now own it without strings attached. It was designed to perform a particular task and supposedly that would be all. What about locking out a processors ability to be over clocked like some of the pentium and AMD chips were? Remember that? How about locking some of the over clocking features in the BIOS of your motherboards? Let’s not forget the reporting feature built into the Pentium’s 4’s not long ago and (sheez) the automated license registration of most software when you first install it….without you even realizing it! Another reason I engage an internet lock down until said software is installed and I can either block or remove these features.

Privacy? Never heard of it.

Tags: Hunt for the Kill Switch