Many people's everyday lives are increasingly determined by digital services such as messengers, navigation systems or social media, and thus also by the electronics on which they are available. The emergence of malware, industrial espionage and product piracy has increased the importance of IT security enormously. Electronic products such as cell phones, modern cars and the smart watch can have vulnerabilities that occur in the complex production and supply chains.

At Jupiter, a focus is placed on the security of electronic products and ensuring this throughout the product's lifecycle. Innovative methods are used so that all phases of product creation and manufacturing, as well as deployment in the field, can be kept in mind. This enables the authenticity and integrity of all electronic components to be assured throughout the supply chain and verified at all times.

In order to establish trust at various levels, trustworthy hardware can be built at the very beginning of a manufacturing process, based on special circuit elements known as security atoms. Novel manufacturing methods are also being researched at the physical chip manufacturing level in cooperation with industry partners. This also includes novel test and verification methods as elements of confidence building and preservation, including dedicated on-chip units and external measurement methods that detect unintentionally added functionality outside of laboratory environments. In addition to specialized hardware verification and test methods, new artificial intelligence-based methods are also being developed.

The Jupiter project is a cooperation of NXP Semiconductors, DSI Datensicherheit, the Department of Embedded Systems and their Applications at TU Darmstadt, and the Institutes of Computer Engineering and of IT Security at the University of Lübeck.

This project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the grant number 16ME0234 in the funding program "Trustworthy Electronics (ZEUS)".