When your phone power consumption is abnormal, it is most likely to be planted Trojan horse

The development of technology has brought more and more electronic devices into our lives. For example, cell phones - a product weighing less than half a pound, but carrying most of the applications of life, payment, photography, social, entertainment, basically all personal information will exist in this modest phone.

Because it has the property of a personal information container, some people with ulterior motives use various methods to steal the information. For example, developing a free application, or sending a text message with a link to plant a Trojan horse into the cell phone, so as to obtain various information and behavior of cell phone users.

Of course, this method has been controlled with more and more controls and continuous upgrading of system security, but then another method of stealing information has surfaced, and it is more powerful, higher-end, and oriented to devices other than just cell phones, and it is not easy to find.

This more powerful and high-end method is to encapsulate the Trojan horse directly into the chip or fixed in the circuit board, so as to achieve the purpose of obtaining sensitive information, and this operation is extremely hidden and difficult to be found. Many countries and institutions are also researching ways to find out if a device has been embedded with a "hard Trojan".

Recently a team of researchers from a Missouri university seems to have solved this problem. They created a test called PDNPulse, which is based on measuring the power consumption of printed circuit boards to find and find small changes in the so-called power consumption "fingerprint", while comparing with known security devices, this method can find out whether the device is implanted with a "hard Trojan horse ".

The team said that the characteristics of power consumption will inevitably be affected by chip or board modifications, no matter how small. In the test, the researchers were able to detect the changes in the "hard Trojan horse" on various circuit boards with 100% accuracy.

In layman's terms, the power consumption of a device with a "hard Trojan horse" will be higher than that of the same device without a "hard Trojan horse". In fact, this principle is also suitable for assessing the software layer of the "Trojan horse", when the device power consumption increased, it is possible that the unknown software resident in the back of the front, and frequent calls to the network, resulting in shorter standby time.

Of course, whether this method is really accurate is unknown, because there are many human factors, such as testers in order to discredit a company, before the test can install a "hard Trojan horse" in it. So the corresponding test supervision is also needed to strengthen, and should be international, otherwise it is very likely to become a smear tool.