Abstract
Encryption of volatile FPGA bitstreams provides confidentiality to the design but does not ensure its authenticity. This paper motivates the need for adding authentication to the configuration process by providing application examples where this functionality is useful. An examination of possible solutions is followed by suggesting a practical one in consideration of the FPGA’s configuration environment constraints. The solution presented here involves two symmetric-key encryption cores running in parallel to provide both authentication and confidentiality while sharing resources for efficient implementation.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
NIST, U.S. Dept. of Commerce: FIPS 197: Advanced encryption standard (2001)
Ferguson, N., Schneier, B.: Practical Cryptography. John Wiley & Sons, New York (2003)
Dworkin, M.: Special Publication 800-38A: Recommendation for block cipher modes of operation. NIST, U.S. Dept. of Commerce (2001)
Hadžić, I., Udani, S., Smith, J.M.: FPGA viruses. In: Lysaght, P., Irvine, J., Hartenstein, R.W. (eds.) FPL 1999. LNCS, vol. 1673, pp. 291–300. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Stigge, M., et al.: Reversing CRC – theory and practice. Technical Report SAR-PR-2006-05, Humboldt University Berlin (2006)
Baetoniu, C., Sheth, S.: XAPP780: FPGA IFF copy protection using Dallas Semiconductor/Maxim DS2432 Secure EEPROM. Xilinx Inc. (2005)
Altera Corp.: FPGA design security solution using MAX II devices (2004)
Xilinx Inc.: UG332: Spartan-3 generation configuration user guide (2006)
Xilinx Inc.: DS202: Virtex-5 data sheet: DC and switching characteristics (2006)
Altera Corp.: Stratix III design handbook (2006)
Xilinx Inc.: DS099: Spartan-3 FPGA family: Complete data sheet (2006)
Parelkar, M.M.: Authenticated encryption in hardware. Master’s thesis, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA (2005)
Batina, L., et al.: Hardware architectures for public key cryptography. VLSI Journal, Integration 34(1-2), 1–64 (2003), http://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/publications/article-31.pdf
NIST, U.S. Dept. of Commerce: FIPS 198: The keyed-hash message authentication code (HMAC) (2002)
Wang, X., Yin, Y.L., Yu, H.: Finding collisions in the full SHA-1. In: Shoup, V. (ed.) CRYPTO 2005. LNCS, vol. 3621, pp. 17–36. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
NIST, U.S. Department of Commerce: FIPS 180-2: Secure hash standard (2002)
Black, J.: A. Authenticated encryption. In: Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security, pp. 10–21. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Parelkar, M.M.: FPGA security – bitstream authentication. Technical report, George Mason University (2004), http://mason.gmu.edu/~mparelka/reports/bitstream_auth.pdf
Dworkin, M.: Special Publication 800-38C: Recommendation for block cipher modes of operation: the CCM mode for authentication and confidentiality. NIST, U.S. Dept. of Commerce (2005)
Parelkar, M.M., Gaj, K.: Implementation of EAX mode of operation for FPGA bitstream encryption and authentication. In: Field Programmable Technology, December 2005, pp. 335–336 (2005), http://mason.gmu.edu/~mparelka/pdfs/fpt05.pdf
Dworkin, M.: Special Publication 800-38B: Recommendation for block cipher modes of operation: The CMAC mode for authentication. NIST, U.S. Dept. of Commerce (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Drimer, S. (2007). Authentication of FPGA Bitstreams: Why and How. In: Diniz, P.C., Marques, E., Bertels, K., Fernandes, M.M., Cardoso, J.M.P. (eds) Reconfigurable Computing: Architectures, Tools and Applications. ARC 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4419. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71431-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71431-6_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-71430-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-71431-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)