FPGA SoC architecture and runtime to prevent hardware Trojans from leaking secrets

Abstract

Hardware Trojans compromise security by invalidating the assumption that hardware provides a root-of-trust for secure systems. We propose a novel approach for an FPGA system-on-chip (SoC) to ensure confidentiality of trusted software despite hardware Trojan attacks. Our approach employs defensive techniques that feature morphing on-chip resources for moving target defense against fabrication-time Trojans, onion-encryption for confidentiality, and replication of functionally-equivalent variants of processing elements with arbitrated voting for resilience to design-time Trojans. These techniques are enabled by partial runtime reconfiguration (PRR) and are managed by a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) that reduces developer burden. We call our approach the Morph Onion-encryption Replication PRR HAL, or MORPH. MORPH aims to provide a stable interface for embedded systems developers to use in deploying applications that are resilient to hardware Trojans.