Intel’s secret facility in Costa Rica used for security research

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In 1997, Intel established a chip testing and packaging plant in Costa Rica, which enabled Costa Rica to truly join the global supply chain system and drove the development of the entire country, which was its landmark event. As Intel increased its investment at the end of last year from US$350 million to US$600 million this year, the area of ​​its packaging plant in Costa Rica has also increased from 15,000 square meters to 26,000 square meters. At the same time, the R&D center laboratory introduced new equipment, making it Intel’s fourth packaging plant to reach 14nm or above, and initially will focus on Xeon processors.

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In fact, Intel’s facilities in Costa Rica are more than just chip testing and packaging. According to TomsHardware, among Intel’s many research centers, the R&D center in Costa Rica has different functions from other regions. The equipment inside is not focused on industry-leading technology development but used for security research on old equipment. Intel has a dedicated warehouse in Costa Rica, which stored approximately 3000 pieces of different hardware and software in the past ten years. General products have a life cycle, but not all consumers will immediately eliminate old products after launching new products. Those products whose usage rate and support update frequency decrease will become more and more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Intel’s research center in Costa Rica will store and test old hardware to find and resolve various security vulnerabilities as early as possible.

The connection between Spectre/Meltdown and Intel’s Costa Rica facilities is further brought to bear by Mohsen Fazlian, general manager of Intel’s product assurance and security unit. Intel also started to upgrade Costa Rica’s facilities in 2018 (completed in the second half of 2019). It can also be used as a remote testing facility. There are approximately 1,000 remote security testing requests per month.

After the continuous occurrence of processor security vulnerabilities in the past few years, Intel has further improved the security research process. Since the upgrade of facilities in Costa Rica was put into use, all new Intel products are accompanied by technical documents, designed to enable engineers to provide up to 10 years of support. In addition, Intel has strict control over anyone who enters related facilities. Applications must be approved by senior management. Surveillance cameras will observe the equipment at any time.

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