MEMS-Enabled Secure PCB Supply Chain
Himanandhan Reddy Kottur, M Shafkat M Khan, Pavanbabu Arjunamahanthi, Liton Kumar Biswas, Nitin Varshney, Liam S. Hayes, Бо Лю, Michael Delany, Joshua Hihath, Navid Asadizanjani · 2025
The increasing reliance on Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) in critical applications such as defense, aerospace, and secure communications has heightened concerns regarding reverse engineering and counterfeiting threats. Conventional security measures, including cryptographic techniques and physical barriers, face limitations against sophisticated adversarial attacks. This paper explores the potential of integrating reconfigurable Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) with PCBs to enhance security. MEMS-based solutions introduce dynamic modifications to PCB characteristics, making reverse engineering more challenging while enabling tamper detection mechanisms. Various adversarial threats to PCB security are examined, alongside the vulnerabilities in the PCB supply chain. This research highlights the urgent need for advanced PCB security mechanisms through case studies of military hardware compromises. This work proposes MEMS-based reconfigurable solutions as a transformative approach to safeguarding PCBs against emerging threats.