Florida Engineers Can Automatically Verify PCB Components

[AlphaAtlas]

Following allegations that China spied on major US companies with micro-controllers embedded in PCBs, engineers from the University of Florida claim they were already working on the problem. Mark Tehranipoor, director of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research, says their automated system "could have identified this part in a matter of seconds to minutes." Using "optical scans, microscopy, X-ray tomography, and artificial intelligence," the system compares PCBs to the original design specs, with very minimal human intervention. Tehranipoor claims they're working on completely automating the system, and postulates that the recent security scare might encourage manufacturers to adopt it.

It starts by taking high-resolution images of the front and back side of the circuit board, he explains. Machine learning and AI algorithms go through the images, tracing the interconnects and identifying the components. Then an X-ray tomography imager goes deeper, revealing interconnects and components buried within the circuit board. (According to Bloomberg, later versions of the attack involved burying the offending chip instead of having it sit on the surface.) That process takes a series of 2D images and automatically stitches them together to produce a layer-by-layer analysis that maps the interconnects and the chips and components they connect. The systems in question in the Bloomberg story probably had a dozen layers, Tehranipoor estimates. All this information is then compared to the original designs to determine if something has been added, subtracted, or altered by the manufacturer.

 

[dgingeri]

They'd have to have controls in place where multiple people would have to confirm changing or submitting a template. If just one person could submit or change a template, then it would give a false sense of security.

 

[DrBorg]

Chinese companies regularly "Redo" boards to "Fix" problems.

I sent a board for volume production out to an unnamed Major Manufacturer, and they "Redesigned" it for me, to make it easier to manufacture.

The boards had 1350V on them, and caught fire when we tried to use them. :rofl: (I didn't see them until later)

They didn't know about HV, they didn't know how to deal with it, so it was just Wrong.

They asked me how to make them, I said make them like I designed them; they wanted ALL the design info, and I told them I'd teach them how to design PCB's for an even million.

I never heard back.

We kept our board inhouse for a few more years, lol.

At the time I left, the Chinese were selling us boards for less than the components cost, and my manufacturers told me they weren't buying any of their parts. :O

Amazingly, our 1 in 10k failure rate was increasing exponentially.

Who tries to save money on a $0.003 part?

We made medical equipment.

 

[katanaD]

2 big issues with this though.

1) if its the manufacture doing the testing.. do you really trust it?

2) if its an outside agency doing the testing, WHY?? would you give them your schematics?? could they be trusted to keep them confidential??

 

[theBrownLlama]

...then the said company gets sold....

 

[PaulP]

2 big issues with this though.

1) if its the manufacture doing the testing.. do you really trust it?

2) if its an outside agency doing the testing, WHY?? would you give them your schematics?? could they be trusted to keep them confidential??

You wouldn't have to give them the schematics, just the board layouts and parts list - basically the thing you gave the overseas board house. You just put them under NDAs, and as long as it's a US company, you have (legal) recourse if they don't hold that information in confidence. Businesses release confidential information to 3rd party test companies every day. This is not a big deal.

 

[PaulP]

...then the said company gets sold....

And the new company must honor all the contracts and agreements that were made by the original company. Now if this new company is off shore, then it does get more difficult to enforce those contracts, depending on where exactly they are located, but that's the risk of doing business. You just can't keep everything in-house.

 

[theBrownLlama]

And the new company must honor all the contracts and agreements that were made by the original company. Now if this new company is off shore, then it does get more difficult to enforce those contracts, depending on where exactly they are located, but that's the risk of doing business. You just can't keep everything in-house.

contract and agreements are only worth it if those that sign it have a fear of reprisals for failure to adhere to them. On matters of national security or it's spy statecraft, these financial penalties are nothing in the face of the security apparatus kidnapping your family and holding them in black sites. ( this is real. Duckgogo China's black site practice for this. They even come to the US to threaten their citizens here, and seemingly so with impunity)

Which is why there is now a demand for a more in-depth due diligence on security risks of foreign buyers, or their proxies.

 

[theBrownLlama]

this quote at the end of the article is intriguing :

"Even so, “this isn’t the attack that keeps me up at night,” says Tehranipoor. “As sophisticated as it was…those attackers could have done a lot more and been much more difficult to detect.”

 

[RealBeast]

this quote at the end of the article is intriguing :

"Even so, “this isn’t the attack that keeps me up at night,” says Tehranipoor. “As sophisticated as it was…those attackers could have done a lot more and been much more difficult to detect.”

He's probably doing a little off the books NSA work at night.

 

[Wiffle]

Meh, give it another 20 years and this won't likely be an issue ever again. As more companies are moving towards fully automated facilities, I feel they won't want to stay in China and do business any longer. The whole point of doing business in China was cheap human labor... but now that the labor is being done by mechanical objects, why pay for a billion dollar facility when the government is just going to either take it over, or copy it and produce another one next door and then start selling to all your buyers. Transportation has always been the biggest hindrance to any successful physical production business, so it makes more sense to set up a production facility closer to where the demand is. Strangely enough, the future looks a lot brighter for countries that at least protect the individual rights of persons and the businesses they create. I think China realizes this shift is coming, that's why their propaganda machine has been turned on to high gear and are making a state sponsored "google".

China is simply killing its golden goose, because they refuse to take care of it, and wants to use everyone else geese instead. But that's what you get when you have a 2000+ year history of where governments have only ever taken from the people that live there.

 

[dgingeri]

...then the said company gets sold....

That's a game the Chinese government loves to play. They buy and sell companies across parent companies to try to keep people from knowing the Chinese government is behind their component manufacturing. It's something the Democrats have done in the US for decades.

 

[DrBorg]

That's a game the Chinese government loves to play. They buy and sell companies across parent companies to try to keep people from knowing the Chinese government is behind their component manufacturing. It's something the Democrats have done in the US for decades.

Please tell me more about the Democrats buying Shell companies?

Is that anything like All County?

:rofl:

 

[dgingeri]

Please tell me more about the Democrats buying Shell companies?

Is that anything like All County?

:rofl:

The Democrats have a particular set of ultra rich supporters. They buy and sell stock all the time, and many are on the boards of various companies around the country. They also happen to be major investors in Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, and there are 13 that are on the boards of those three banks. They rotate their investment in each of those banks, selling from one and buying up another, an join the boards, confirming the Democrat support for each of those banks. Those three banks also have a much larger complaint level than most, and consistently violate banking regulations and laws, yet rarely if ever get punished for it.

They also invest in, and even start some, collections companies, and set those collections companies up with special deal with the big banks. They get those collections companies to violate collections laws, and when the burden of lawsuits against the company get to be too much, they take the money and run to another one, or start a new one. They play the shell game across many severely mal-operated collections, dozens at a time, and them blame it all on the Republicans.

That's how government regulations work. They punish the ones who operate properly and abide by the regulations while allowing the politically connected companies to violate the regulations, giving them a major advantage in the market.

 

[theBrownLlama]

pay for a billion dollar facility when the government is just going to either take it over, or copy it and produce another one next door and then start selling to all your buyers. Transportation has always been the biggest hindrance to any successful physical production business, so it makes more sense to set up a production facility closer to where the demand is. Strangely enough, the future looks a lot brighter for countries that at least protect the individual rights of persons and the businesses they create. I think China realizes this shift is coming, that's why their propaganda machine has been turned on to high gear and are making a state sponsored "google".

one reason = tax. What trumps everything else? money in your own pockets. The Chinese gov won't mind losing out on the billions of tax , if they can get corp-secrets and tech.

 

[theBrownLlama]

The Democrats have a particular set of ultra rich supporters. They buy and sell stock all the time, and many are on the boards of various companies around the country. They also happen to be major investors in Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, and there are 13 that are on the boards of those three banks. They rotate their investment in each of those banks, selling from one and buying up another, an join the boards, confirming the Democrat support for each of those banks. Those three banks also have a much larger complaint level than most, and consistently violate banking regulations and laws, yet rarely if ever get punished for it.

They also invest in, and even start some, collections companies, and set those collections companies up with special deal with the big banks. They get those collections companies to violate collections laws, and when the burden of lawsuits against the company get to be too much, they take the money and run to another one, or start a new one. They play the shell game across many severely mal-operated collections, dozens at a time, and them blame it all on the Republicans.

That's how government regulations work. They punish the ones who operate properly and abide by the regulations while allowing the politically connected companies to violate the regulations, giving them a major advantage in the market.

i think that applies to the regular faces of the Bilderberg group, old money (the families) and Jewish money more than Democrats.

but good luck trying to figure out how these 3 groups move their money around. It's the most obtuse . Even to this day , no leaks from Bilderberg still.

 

[Arcygenical]

But can they see why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?

Or what fried on my b350 board.

 

[DrBorg]

The Democrats have a particular set of ultra rich supporters. ...

I wondered if this post would be replied to overnight; You guys are from Eastern Europe, aren't you?

:rofl:

People aren't all dumb here.

 

[triwolf]

If I was a dirty backstabbing Chinese, I'd be worried.

 

[triwolf]

Chinese companies regularly "Redo" boards to "Fix" problems.

Who tries to save money on a $0.003 part?

Demonic money worshiping Chinese.

 

[dgingeri]

i think that applies to the regular faces of the Bilderberg group, old money (the families) and Jewish money more than Democrats.

but good luck trying to figure out how these 3 groups move their money around. It's the most obtuse . Even to this day , no leaks from Bilderberg still.

Could be. Never heard of Bilderberg before. I just know I got screwed over by Citibank and their lackey, fly-by-night collection agencies, claiming I still owed them, ten times what I originally did, ten years after I paid it off. So, I started watching who it was that was calling me, who was on their boards of directors or the owning investment groups, and what all they did. I found a lot of names kept coming up as board members or investment companies and their board members. Time and again, a collection agency would pop up owned and run by the same 13 people, with common last names with the boards from the 3 big banks I mentioned. They'd consistently violate the fair credit collections act, and as soon as I'd file a law suit, they'd fold up and someone else would come after me. It was like stomping out cockroaches.

Later, I learned how much they supported the Democratic party. All three big banks are major contributors. That's on public record. The part that isn't so easy to find is how much those board members donate their own money to Democrat allied PACs. That's in the hundreds of millions. Of course, they make tens of billions back because of the regulations that prevent competition from coming up, so that investment pays off.

 

[theBrownLlama]

Could be. Never heard of Bilderberg before. I just know I got screwed over by Citibank and their lackey, fly-by-night collection agencies, claiming I still owed them, ten times what I originally did, ten years after I paid it off. So, I started watching who it was that was calling me, who was on their boards of directors or the owning investment groups, and what all they did. I found a lot of names kept coming up as board members or investment companies and their board members. Time and again, a collection agency would pop up owned and run by the same 13 people, with common last names with the boards from the 3 big banks I mentioned. They'd consistently violate the fair credit collections act, and as soon as I'd file a law suit, they'd fold up and someone else would come after me. It was like stomping out cockroaches.

Later, I learned how much they supported the Democratic party. All three big banks are major contributors. That's on public record. The part that isn't so easy to find is how much those board members donate their own money to Democrat allied PACs. That's in the hundreds of millions. Of course, they make tens of billions back because of the regulations that prevent competition from coming up, so that investment pays off.

when you get to that level of political influence and funding, the partisan ideas by either Democrats or Republicans is far from being the motive.

It becomes a point of holding on to what they have already made, and to keep the competitor off .


oh, and Bilderberg is the annual gathering of the world's most powerful and richest men in the world ( Western world that is. Pretty sure the Russians and Chinese do it too but press there is not up to par to finding out ) , where there is no press, no notes and no memos. Something like what an evil guild in a Bond movie would do.

 

[dgingeri]

when you get to that level of political influence and funding, the partisan ideas by either Democrats or Republicans is far from being the motive.

It becomes a point of holding on to what they have already made, and to keep the competitor off .


oh, and Bilderberg is the annual gathering of the world's most powerful and richest men in the world ( Western world that is. Pretty sure the Russians and Chinese do it too but press there is not up to par to finding out ) , where there is no press, no notes and no memos. Something like what an evil guild in a Bond movie would do.

Looking up that Bilderberg thing, I see a bunch of European rulers listed, but no Americans. The ones I see on these boards of directors for banks and collection agencies are all American. Their interest in the Democratic party is more about pushing more regulations that would stifle competition to their interests. Republicans are against such regulations, except for a few related to Defense industries. More of a "ruling class" kind of thinking, which is right in line with the Democratic Party's actions.