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Development of an Anti-Tamper Operational Environment Sensor

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Air Force
Contract: FA8650-06-M-8057
Agency Tracking Number: O053-A05-1217
Amount: $99,175.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: OSD05-A05
Solicitation Number: 2005.3
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2005
Award Year: 2006
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2006-04-07
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2007-04-07
Small Business Information
1410 Sachem Place, Suite 202
Charlottesville, VA 22901
United States
DUNS: 120839477
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Alec Bateman
 Sr. Research Scientist
 (434) 973-1215
 bateman@bainet.com
Business Contact
 David Ward
Title: President
Phone: (434) 973-1215
Email: barron@bainet.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

"Black-box" attacks have the potential to significantly diminish the technological advantage of the U.S. military while requiring relatively modest resources on the part of an adversary. The "black-box" attack is an attempt to understand the functionality of a system from an input-output perspective, without the need to fully reverse engineer the implementation. The attack typically involves testing a system in a laboratory environment where a wide range of input conditions can be systematically introduced. The knowledge gained from such an attack can be used effectively to develop countermeasures to U.S. systems. Anti-tamper hardware technology is needed to thwart such attacks and protect critical program information. We propose a research effort to develop an operational environment sensor to address the anti-tamper hardware need. During a "black-box" attack in a laboratory environment, the system configuration will typically be altered in some fashion to facilitate testing. Such alteration will affect the characteristics of the RF spectrum emitted by the device. Our approach employs an RF sensor capable of sweeping through a broad frequency range and detecting changes in the characteristic spectrum, which will be indicative of an attack.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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