Battelle announced a technology aimed at eliminating the risk of counterfeit integrated circuits (ICs) in devices for aerospace and defense systems yesterday.

Battelle claims its system, called Barricade, provides non-destructive authentication of electronic components from trusted and untrusted sources, which in turn enables separation of cloned or counterfeit components from authentic ones at a lower cost.

“As counterfeiting continues to be a growing issue for both suppliers and manufacturers, ensuring that all components are effectively and accurately verified for authenticity has become an increasingly time consuming and expensive task," says Larry House, Cyber Technical director at Battelle.

Barricade's validation process involves placing the IC into a chip socket in order to receive confirmation of authenticity or detection of counterfeit or cloned component. Within seconds, it determines authenticity based on electrical signatures and a classification algorithm that generates identity signatures for each class of chips in a class of authentic devices.

Barricade's approach is claimed to be different from current anti-counterfeiting technologies because it does not require tagging and tracking and can be conducted at any point in the supply chain.