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Comment by Timothycquinn | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this technique can be used to scan a PCB as they can be in attack vector for supply chain attacks.

My thoughts exactly - I can easily see a business in taking chips out of a supply chain and performing this analysis against the expected layouts.

Its possible that Intel / other chip manufacturers / board manufacturers would pay for just to improve confidence in their supply chain.

At some point this is a few millions a year, and a nice tick box in the pitch deck.

Dare I bring up the Bloomberg article without causing a shitstorm? I remember reading around that time a (I think) presentation on how to trick / hide against x-ray tomography etc but I can't find the link to the source if anyone has it?

I recently had an IPMI on on of my Supermicro servers and it was super funny to hear the conspiracy theory from the SuperMicro support that it was not working because maybe the Chinese were worming through a backdoor that was hidden on the machine.

I'm quite sure that the issue was just a faulty IPMI as I've seen it happen before with older units but I had a good laugh.

I'm a believer in Murphy's law where whatever can happen will happen. Supply chain attacks are quite possible, would be very fruitful and therefore must be happening. But will we ever get the truth from the big vendors? I don't think it will happen any time soon but with this x-ray technology, it will be way easier to detect them.

attach photographic plate to lead plate, attach PCB to photographic plate, mail to collaborator across a jurisdiction with X-ray postal inspection, collaborator develops photographic plate, 50% success rate depending on face down or face up, scan image and send result.

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