Computer threats have been very common over the past years. The fact that there is no stopping to the hijacking of these machines is the reason why te

Ever thought of a hack-proof computer? Some researchers are working towards making it reality

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2021-05-21 14:54:42

Computer threats have been very common over the past years. The fact that there is no stopping to the hijacking of these machines is the reason why tech companies are investing so much in creating effective safeguards. Some recent and egregious examples of security vulnerabilities include “Meltdown” and “Spectre”, which put millions of computers at risk because of flawed chips. A chip is the brain of the computer and it is the primary target of most attacks. What if this chip was made infallible and robust, so much so that nothing can hack it? Some researchers are now working on one such chip that can ward off attacks.

Security researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a new CPU design called “Morpheus” that will be nearly hack-proof. According to IEEE Spectrum, this chipset and the computer running on it will be able to stop a large percentage of attacks. The research team led by computer scientist Todd Austin has used encryption to make this chip a lot stronger and more effective than the current-generation computer chips. As a result, the chipset is so strong that most exploits will find it hard to penetrate the defences. “It makes the computer into a puzzle that happens to compute. Our idea was that if we could make it really hard to make any exploit work on it, then we wouldn’t have to worry about individual exploits,” said Austin in the publication.

To test how effective this new chipset is, the security researchers challenged as many as 580 White Hat hackers to bypass security on the chipset at a recent virtual bug bounty programme sponsored by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Project’s Agency). These hackers took 13,000 hours to try to let themselves into the chipset but in vain.