Daub microchips with plant DNA to weed out the fakes

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent(Image: Francesco Carta/Getty Images)

Inks laced with telltale plant DNA sequences could solve a debilitating problem that's dogging safety critical, aerospace and defence electronics: revealing whether the sliver of silicon hidden inside a sealed plastic chip package is what the label says it is.?It might sound a minor issue, but counterfeiting of microchips has increased fourfold since 2009 - and could one day cause fatal failures in vital systems - whether they are in intensive care applications or ejector seats.

Made by Applied DNA Sciences of Stony Brook, New York, the test applies known plant DNA sequences to the ink or varnish on a chip's casing. The sequences can be specific to the batch of chips to foil fraudsters trying to copy it. To check a batch, a swab of the chip's surface is taken, dispatched to Applied DNA Sciences and then sequenced - to reveal the presence or absence of the correct authenticating code. Silicon Valley chip maker Altera Corp, which makes programmable logic circuits, is now in second phase trials with the technology - a phase that got the go-ahead because initial tests looked so promising.
Microchip fakery takes many forms: empty chip packages can be sold with the part number of an expensive military-grade microprocessor or memory chip printed on top; cheap chips from e-waste can be reprinted with a new ID - so an amplifier can suddenly become a logic chip or a timer, for example. Rejected, substandard chips can be steered back onto the market by crooked microchip-industry insiders. While tests should reveal such fakery, the worry is that some chips might evade such testing - or work for a short time and then fail in a life-critical application.In the US, military contractors can no longer pass the blame for not spotting fakes on to their microchip suppliers: the recently passed Federal Anti-Counterfeiting Amendment Act?places legal liability firmly on the contractor. And to help them authenticate microelectronic components, the Pentagon's Defence Logistics Agency is sponsoring industrial tests in which plant DNA is being used as an authentication biomarker.?
As always with high-tech authentication measures, the trick will be staying ahead of the counterfeiter's attempts to copy it - as they did with holograms, for example - but the uniqueness of DNA sequences looks likely to keep the fakers at bay for some time.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1d192d7e/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A120C0A30Ccan0Ebiology0Eanswer0Ethe0Egravest0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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