Hackers can potentially destroy devices made on processes of less than 10nm through heating or artificial ageing as they are hugely sensitive, according to a research team from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
The team is trying to build a defending system against potential attacks,they are working on building a smart system which will keep monitoring the normal processor's thermal patterns during normal system operations.
Professor Jorg Henkel said "Every chip produces a specific thermal fingerprint, “Calculations are carried out, something is stored in the main memory or retrieved from the hard disk. All these operations produce short-term heating and cooling in various areas of the processor."
Professor Henkel's team is monitoring device heating process in various electronic devices during normal operations including infrared cameras which changes temperature with sesitive deviations.
In future temperature sensors will be installed in various devices. Professor Henkel said "We already have temperature sensors on chips for overheat protection," he further added that "We will increase the number of sensors and use them for cyber security purposes."
In future scientists want to add chips having neural networks on devices to monitor temperature variations to protect them from malicious activities.