HDL: watch out for hard viruses

Hackers could be pushing their efforts up the design chain, so US researchers are looking for malware embedded in intellectual property blocks.

Often, claims the University of Arkansas, chip companies buy designs from third parties and have no way of knowing if the HDL contains code that could present a security threat.

"With a few lines of code, they can put in additional functionalities," said Arkansas researcher Dr Jia Di. "They could steal your information or modify the data you receive without you knowing."

The US Department of Defense is giving Di $250,000 to develop a way to test hardware designs for malicious elements.

He and his students are initially creating a tool that can look at HDL code and determine all the functionalities it is capable of performing.

In the next phase of the project, they will attempt to determine if any of those functionalities are malicious.