Computer chip vulnerabilities discovered

A research team from Washington State University has highlighted important and previously unknown weaknesses in high-performance computer chips that can cause failures in modern electronics.

Researchers found that they could harm the on-chip communication system and deliberately minimize the lifetime of the entire computer chip by adding malicious workloads.

Under the leadership of Assistant Professor in Parth Pandey, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School, he recently reported working on network-on-chip during the 2018 IEEE / ACM International seminar.

Researchers have worked to understand the vulnerabilities of computer chips to prevent malicious attacks on electronics that make everyday life. Some consumer electronics vendors, such as Apple and Samsung, have been accused of exploiting 

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vulnerabilities in their own electronics and sending software updates, which deliberately slow down the earlier phone models to encourage consumers to buy new products. 

 Previous researchers have studied computer chip components, such as the processor for computer memory and security vulnerabilities, but the WSU research team found significant weaknesses in the sophisticated communication backbone of high-performance computer chips.

"The communication system is the glue that holds everything together," Pandey said. "When this malfunction begins, the whole system gets crushed."

High-performance computers use a large number of processors and do parallel processing for large data applications and cloud computing, and coordinate the communication system processor and memory. 

Researchers are working to increase the number of processors and include high-performance capabilities in hand-held devices.

The researchers prepared the three "craftily constructed deleterious" attacks to test the communication system. 

This extra workload enhances electro-charged stress and crosstalk noise. 

Researchers found that a limited number of significant vertical links in the communication system was particularly weak to fail. 

They add the link processor to a stack and allow them to talk to each other.

"We determined how an agent could target the communication system to start a malfunction in the chip," Pandey said.

 "The role and danger of the communications community was not clear for the research community first."

Researchers will now work to develop ways to reduce the problem, such as to detect and defeat automated techniques and algorithms.

This work was part of projects funded by the National Science Foundation and US Army Research Office. 

The WSU team is collaborating with New York University and Duke University researchers.