Security News > 2021 > August > Knockoff semiconductor chips flood the enterprise market
The need for chips spiked as well-given how central they became for more devices for people staying home.
One way grifters are operating is they've turned to purchasing ads for chips on search engines to bait buyers, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
One result of the situation has been the bogus chips market has caused higher production costs from the resources needed for figuring out whether a chip is legit.
"Many frauds occur," according to John Annand, an analyst and director in the infrastructure team at the enterprise IT analyst firm, Info-Tech Research Group, "Simply because buyers are being pressured to release funds to hastily erected, web-based chip distributors, who just as hastily, shut down these websites by the time the promised product is supposed to arrive, destroying any potential for recourse."
Borza offered up other solutions, such as "Optical and electrical watermarking" on provided chips, "Embedded cryptographic identity" info within chips and "Chemical or microscopic structural marking of packaging materials."
Borza said some chips deemed faulty by enterprises-and not outright unworking ones but underperforming chips-are then often recycled back into the supply chain.