In another question I asked about ways one might obfuscate the design of a system, to prevent unauthorized cloning. One suggestion was that IC manufacturers are often willing to put custom labels on their chips. The idea is interesting, but my quantities are low enough that this would not be cost-effective. How might one remove or otherwise render unreadable the labels on ICs?
Answer
Grinding or other abrasives is the only reliable method. I think I've seen machines that will do this for DIP components.
A dedicated reverse-engineering person can probably guess the part from the pinout, surrounding circuit, and package or simply have the epoxy removed and look at the identification numbers on the die under a microscope, so it only goes so far.
In my (somewhat) humble opinion, hiding the numbers on chips is kind of a red flag that the product is really easy to clone, has nothing proprietary in it, and is being sold for a very healthy margin, but perhaps that's just me. You won't find top tier manufacturers doing it.
You could always incorporate one of these chips.
No comments:
Post a Comment