Counterfeit integrated circuits (ICs) are an emerging problem in the semiconductor industry due to their worldwide production and distribution. How to prevent the increasing threat of counterfeiting is a complex issue, because it relates to techniques, legalities, and manufacturing.

In this book, the authors present an overall description of the physical and electrical techniques that are used in the state of the art. Those techniques are proven to be useful in the practical detection and avoidance of counterfeit ICs. The book wants to serve as a resource for both beginners and experts in the counterfeit IC domain, but most of the material is a basic introduction; further background information and insights are not thoroughly described. Therefore, this book is more beginner oriented, usable as a handbook for engineers and experts in this field.

Basically, the methods mentioned in this book can be categorized into physical or electrical. It is easy to understand how the physical methods can be used against counterfeiting (like other products). For the electrical tests, the book introduces signatures, watermarking, and physical unclonable functions (PUFs) as the most accepted solutions. Moreover, the Connecticut secure split-test is emphasized as a theoretical testing framework for the prevention of unlicensed and rejected ICs from untrusted foundries and assemblies. The experimental results are promising for further analysis.

As far as I’m concerned, the book is missing a part. In the description of PUFs, the authors describe one of their shortcomings: they are not stable for a certain input due to their natural property. But in the research, experts have already introduced the concept of the fuzzy extractor to solve this problem. Chapter 12 should include a description of fuzzy extractors in order to make this book complete.