Reconfigurable LUT: A Double Edged Sword for Security-Critical Applications

Debapriya Basu Roy; Shivam Bhasin; Sylvain Guilley; Jean-Luc Danger; Debdeep Mukhopadhyay; Xuan Thuy Ngo; Zakaria Najm

Paper 2015/120

Reconfigurable LUT: A Double Edged Sword for Security-Critical Applications

Debapriya Basu Roy, Shivam Bhasin, Sylvain Guilley, Jean-Luc Danger, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, Xuan Thuy Ngo, and Zakaria Najm

Abstract

Modern FPGAs offer various new features for enhanced reconfigurability and better performance. One of such feature is a dynamically Reconfigurable LUT (RLUT) whose content can be updated internally, even during run-time. There are many scenarios like pattern matching where this feature has been shown to enhance the performance of the system. In this paper, we study RLUT in the context of secure applications. We describe the basic functionality of RLUT and discuss its potential applications for security. Next, we design several case-studies to exploit RLUT feature in security critical scenarios. The exploitation are studied from a perspective of a designer (e.g. designing countermeasures) as well as a hacker (inserting hardware Trojans).

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Publication info: Published elsewhere. SPACE-2015
Keywords: Reconfigurable LUT (RLUT)FPGA CFGLUT5 Hardware Trojans Side-Channel Countermeasures Secret Ciphers.
Contact author(s): dbroy24 @ gmail com
History: 2015-12-22: revised; 2015-02-26: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2015/120
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2015/120,
      author = {Debapriya Basu Roy and Shivam Bhasin and Sylvain Guilley and Jean-Luc Danger and Debdeep Mukhopadhyay and Xuan Thuy Ngo and Zakaria Najm},
      title = {Reconfigurable {LUT}: A Double Edged Sword for Security-Critical Applications},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2015/120},
      year = {2015},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/120}
}