Pulverising chip

You cannot steal what does not exist

WikiLeaks, with their slogan ‘We open governments’, has unveiled obscured information incessantly. With every leak, it has rattled governments or various organizations embroiled in the act. The world was taken by a storm when Edward Snowden, without prior authorization, disclosed classified information from the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and United Kingdom Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to the public. But looking through the eyes of the government, all these acts were carried out in the interest of national security. Could they have averted this divulgence in some way?

Doesn’t devising a technology to prevent the secret information from getting into the wrong hands sound like a promising solution?

Even for the most secret espionage agents across the world, receiving mission orders from a self-destructing device has been a dream. In their quest to turn this dream into reality, Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and PARC, a Xerox company, have been triumphant in implementing this concept. It turns out, for them it was just a walk in the PARC!

Encephalon behind notion: DARPA & PARC

When Sputnik took a big leap of faith for mankind in 1957, the world exulted in its success but the scientists of the United States were already on the drawing board finding reasons for their failure. It was then that DARPA was formed with the mission that the States would, from that time forward, be the initiator and not the victim of strategic technological surprises. DARPA has, since then, delivered on its mission by being involved in many path breaking inventions. Contrary to popular belief that its domain of innovation is restricted to just the military facilities, it has contributed to modern civilian society too. The Internet, Automated Voice Recognition (Siri), Global Positioning System (GPS) have been the highlights of its contribution. From adding intelligence and automation to breaking new frontiers in clean technology and biomedical domain, DARPA and its innovation partners have lifted the curtains on a diverse set of innovative projects. In a similar quest for innovation, it decided to collude with PARC.

Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) has given the world IPv6, the most recent version of the Internet Protocol. IPv6 provides enough addresses to assign to every atom on the earth! Graphical User Interface (GUI), Ethernet and Laser Printers are some of the most successful projects PARC has been associated with. It is a wholly owned, research and development subsidiary company of Xerox, which aims at reaching the infinite limits of evolution. It has also been involved in the development of several projects funded by DARPA.

The Vanishing Programmable Resource(VAPR) is one such project, which is aimed at enabling transient electronics as a deployable technology. Transient electronics are electronics with a pre-engineered service life, or in other words, electronics that disappear after achieving their objective. The challenge in developing transient electronics lies in the fact that they not only need to be comparable in performance to their commercial off-the -shelf counterparts, but also be durable enough to atomize beyond use and recognition on command. To achieve this objective, DARPA has contracted with BAE systems, a British multinational defence, security and aerospace company. With this collaboration, DARPA aims to build electronics with system-on-a-chip design, useful for radios, remote sensors and phones.

Inception of aeon:

DARPA and PARC introduced the ‘Vanishing’ chip under the VAPR Program recently that may revolutionise data security and piracy. On its release at DARPA’s “Wait, What?” forum on future technologies at St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A., this chip was described as a new type of pictographic processor that is capable of self-destructing in a controlled triggerable manner. This chip was designed as a part of DARPA’s initiative to help safeguard top secret data. The chip could be used to store data such as encryption keys and on command, shatter into thousands of pieces so small, reconstruction is impossible. With every information about our personal and professional life being digitalised, there is an increasing need for data security which prevents hackers and unauthorised users access to computers, databases and websites. Technologies used in order to secure data include software/hardware disk encryption, data masking and also quantum computing. Quantum computing could offer a potential unravelment to this in the long run, since attempting to read the data being transferred between two quantum computers will inevitably change the data state and alert the users that they are being spied on. However, as quantum computing is a long way off, other solutions for data security are needed. This has resulted in growing interest in transient technology, which some experts expect to play a key role in securing sensitive data.

Carving the chip :

PARC introduced DUST (Disintegration Upon Stress Release Trigger) a technology used in fabricating the chip. It is based on stress engineered glass that allows electronic devices to rapidly and remotely disintegrate on command, leaving behind extremely small particles hardly visible to the human eye.

PARC’s new computer chip uses tempered Gorilla Glass, the Corning-produced tough glass used in the displays of numerous smart phones. In order to temper the glass, the ion exchange method is employed. Normally, glass is tempered by cooling the edges. The glass exterior shrinks, putting the exterior into compression while the warmer interior maintains incredible tensile stress. Because glass is a poor temperature conductor, the heat-tempering process only works with pieces of glass that are at least 0.03 inches (1 millimetre) thick.

Due to this very reason, the ion exchange method is used, which involves a thin piece of glass, rich in sodium ions or atoms of sodium with one electron stripped off, put into a hot bath of potassium nitrate. Potassium ions then try to swap places with the sodium ions, but because the heftier potassium ions must squeeze into place within the silicon matrix, this creates enormous tension in the glass. Though this glass is stronger than normal, if a piece of it is broken, the glass shatters explosively into little particles. The silicon wafer is directly attached to the glass, or the two are fabricated together. The final product looks like a piece of glass with some metal lines drawn all over it.

Eliciting the self-destruction:

The chip suicide is induced when it is triggered with a tiny heating element, causing a thermal shock that creates a fracture which spreads throughout the glass. Anything from mechanical switches, Wi-Fi, laser lights to radio waves, voice phrases and photodiodes could be used to send the kill signal to the chip. When someone initiates a crack in these glasses, it propagates at about 1,500 meters per second.

Possible applications:

The technology has reached the prototype stage, but no commercial or government uses for the self-destructing electronics are in the works.

Electronics play a wider role in modern warfare. Equipping remote sensors, cell phones and other gadgets, they feature in virtually all battlefield operations but can leave behind a potential national security risk. The ‘Vanishing’ chip can be used for fabricating these modern accessories used in battlefield. These accessories could then be destroyed on trigger after the war is over. Also the dreck left behind could be disintegrated using this transient chip.

Securing one’s personal data is as crucial as securing any secret government data. On commercialization, this technology can help individuals to protect personal information. This chip may have applications in a civilian context, especially for mobile devices. Encryption keys on cell phones are usually very long random numbers that are nearly impossible to crack, but they are often protected by relatively weak passwords chosen by their owners. Various forensics tools rely on this principle to crack the encryption technology included on most smartphones. Placing encryption keys on a self-destructing chip that could be activated if a device were lost or stolen, would make it much more difficult for a thief to extract information.

The Pulverising chip could also be useful for digital rights management technologies. All it needs for a DRM scheme to fail is one hacker extracting keys and sharing them. In case of any manipulation, the self-destructing chip would make extraction of data more challenging by eliminating stored encryption keys. Health records and banking records can be secured using self -destructing chip. Another application of this radical creation could be in diminishing e-waste. 20–50 million tons of e-waste is generated worldwide every year. This global mountain of waste is expected to continue growing by 8% per year. It is estimated that only 15–20% of e-waste is recycled, the rest of these electronics go directly into landfills and incinerators. This technology could make a giant difference in these facts, by making it easier to recycle and decompose e-waste.

Into the future:

Being a state-of-the-art creation in bailiwick of data security and transient electronics, there are climacteric questions that come to mind. While this chip provides enough protection to safeguard information in electronic devices, people are still sceptical about its reliability. What if hackers found a way of hacking into this chip and managed to trigger its self-destruction before it could attain its objective? On the contrary, if it were to be immune to such threats, there is always the possibility of it being in use already. What if the secret services already had millions of such sensors, that they have put to use in covert operations without the knowledge of the general public? If allegations like these were to be proved, it would be a major violation of privacy. But can this be proved at all? Isn’t wiping off the evidence, exactly what this chip does best! What if it already has?