The Navy Bought Fake Chinese Microchips That Could Have Disarmed U.S. Missiles
Robert Johnson
Jun. 27, 2011, 9:22

Last year, the U.S. Navy bought 59,000 microchips for use in everything from missiles to transponders and all of them turned out to be counterfeits from China.
Wired reports the chips weren't only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a "back-door" and could have been remotely shut down at any time.
If left undiscovered the result could have rendered useless U.S. missiles and killed the signal from aircraft that tells everyone whether it's friend or foe.
Apparently foreign chip makers are often better at making cheap microchips and U.S. defense contractors are loathe to pass up the better deal.
The problem remains with these "trojan-horse" circuits that can be built into the chip and are almost impossible to detect -- especially without the original plans to compare them to.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) is now looking for ways to check the chips to make sure they haven't been hacked in the production process.
Expect to see a whole lot more funding directed to this goal. Or, considering IARPA is the research and development section of the intelligence community -- expect the money to be spent -- don't expect to see where.

Wired reports they had been made with a "back-door" and could have been remotely shut down at any time.

The chips turned out to be counterfeits from China, but it could have been even worse. The chips could have been hacked, able to shut off a missile in the event of war or lie around just waiting to malfunction.

I think they misunderstood.

I'm thinking that a chip in a missile would need a lot more than just an undocumented back door to get hacked. Like some kind of way to access it for instance.

It doesn't have to be "hacked". One possibility mentioned was simply premature failure. Missiles don't usually get used the day they're assembled, and depending on the chip it could be designed to fail in certain situations.