Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2015/120

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

Debapriya Basu Roy and Shivam Bhasin and Sylvain Guilley and Jean-Luc Danger and Debdeep Mukhopadhyay and 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).

Category / Keywords: Reconfigurable LUT (RLUT), FPGA, CFGLUT5, Hardware Trojans, Side-Channel Countermeasures, Secret Ciphers.

Original Publication (in the same form): SPACE-2015

Date: received 16 Feb 2015, last revised 22 Dec 2015

Contact author: dbroy24 at gmail com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20151222:123855 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2015/120