French startup Texplained Sarl (Sophia Antipolis, France) has opened a laboratory for analysis of IC security and to help companies and governments protect against counterfeiting, IP theft and security breaches.
Texplained uses reverse engineering techniques to determine key IC pin-out from PCB layout and then plasma etching, chemical mechanical polishing and wet chemical etching to delayer ICs. Each interconnect layer and the active layer is then imaged with a scanning election microscope. Texplained’s final contribution is proprietary reverse-engineering software called ARES that can be used to analyse the images of the circuits on each layer and ultimately to extract a netlist of the device.
http://www.eenewsanalog.com/news/startup-opens-lab-chip-security-evaluation