Counterfeit Electronic Parts
Hughitt, Brian
NASA

Counterfeit electronic parts are items whose material, performance, or characteristics have been knowingly misrepresented. Examples include parts that have been remarked to disguise the item’s original identity and falsely reflect an authentic part, defective parts that have been scrapped by the original manufacturer, and previously used parts that have been salvaged from disposed assemblies. As reported by the U.S. Government/Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP), incidences of counterfeiting are more than doubling every two years. Counterfeit electronic parts pose severe performance and reliability threats, yet are oftentimes difficult to detect by traditional receipt inspection and test methods. This presentation will describe the various causal factors that have resulted in the proliferation of electronic parts counterfeiting, show a variety of counterfeit part examples, and present a risk mitigation strategy for the prevention and detection of counterfeit parts.