Signal-level Security

[Vibhav]

I mean protection for the data transferred between components on a PCB,
against access from someone who has physical access to the board. As
an example, there is a data bus between the baseband and a FPGA.

Is there a method to prevent someone who has access to the board, from
reading the data on that bus using a scope?

Thanks for your assistance.

Vib

 

[MooseFET]

I mean protection for the data transferred between components on a PCB,
against access from someone who has physical access to the board. As
an example, there is a data bus between the baseband and a FPGA.

Is there a method to prevent someone who has access to the board, from
reading the data on that bus using a scope?

Thanks for your assistance.

You have three not very good options.

(1)
You can encript the data if it is digital. This adds a bunch of
electronics to the two ends of the path.

(2)
You can make the meaning of the signal so obscure that no-one ever
figures out how to decode it. This very hard to do because 6 billion
people are working agaisnt you.

(3)
You can use "quantum encription". Basically you send the data with a
very poor SNR and lots of error correction codes and require that the
error rate remain in the predicted band. This can be very secure but
it requires a two way connection and is slow to get the data through.