Paper 2021/1542

An End-to-End Bitstream Tamper Attack Against Flip-Chip FPGAs

Fahim Rahman, Farimah Farahmandi, and Mark Tehranipoor

Abstract

FPGA bitstream encryption and authentication can be defeated by various techniques and it is critical to understand how these vulnerabilities enable extraction and tampering of commercial FPGA bitstreams. We exploit the physical vulnerability of bitstream encryption keys to readout using failure analysis equipment and conduct an end-to-end bitstream tamper attack. Our work underscores the feasibility of supply chain bitstream tampering and the necessity of guarding against such attacks in critical systems.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Applications
Publication info
Preprint. MINOR revision.
Keywords
SecurityTamperingBitstreamFPGA
Contact author(s)
fahimrahman @ ece ufl edu
farimah @ ece ufl edu
tehranipoor @ ece ufl edu
History
2021-12-13: revised
2021-11-23: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2021/1542
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2021/1542,
      author = {Fahim Rahman and Farimah Farahmandi and Mark Tehranipoor},
      title = {An End-to-End Bitstream Tamper Attack Against Flip-Chip FPGAs},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2021/1542},
      year = {2021},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1542}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1542}
}
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