Shine a Light: Infrared Imaging for Hardware Assurance

Hardware Hacker Andrew 'Bunny' Huang's Strategies for 'Higher Assurance Silicon' Mathew J. Schwartz (euroinfosec) • November 20, 2025

Attackers tampering with computer chips after they've left the factory but before they get deployed by end users is a long-running hardware security challenge.

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"When you buy a chip based on the label, you don't really know what's going on, and there's no real assurance for the product you have, at the end of the day," said American hardware hacking expert Andrew "Bunny" Huang, who famously reverse-engineered the Microsoft Xbox, in a Thursday keynote presentation at the 11th annual Hardwear.io conference in Amsterdam.

The Singapore-based security consultant said he's encountered this exact scenario when doing research and security work. In one case he found a purported cryptographic chip on a board that turned out ...