Navy scientists use minute manufacturing differences to detect counterfeit IDs
Approach relies in variation among transistors and wires that make up compuuter chips; two may work in the same way, but differences in threshold voltages make all the difference in detecting a fake
There is so underestimating the determination of thieves, nor it possible to underestimate their technical prowess. Just as easily as the most violent would cut off the fingers of a man in order to overcome a fingerprint biometrics reader, the better-educated criminal might forge another’s identification card by breaking it open and duplicating the chip inside. A recent patent application proposes to solve this problem by relying on the simple proposition that the large scale manufacture of computer chips results in sufficient variation to assure that no two chips are exactly alike.
Researchers with the U.S. Navy believe that each chip manufactured can be identified based on minute differences in the hundreds of thousands of transistors and wires that make up a microchip. As a result, the application notes, “no two chips will have arrays of transistors whose threshold voltages are exactly the same.” These variations can be used to create a unique identifying code for each chip. The idea is to create readers at banks or physical access points that both authenticate the cards against traditional sources and against the predetermined identifying code generated by the transistor speed.
-read more in this New Scientist report
