Security on FPGAs

Abstract

In the last decade, it has become apparent that embedded systems are integral parts of our every day lives. The wireless nature of many embedded applications as well as their omnipresence has made the need for security and privacy preserving mechanisms particularly important. Thus, as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) become integral parts of embedded systems, it is imperative to consider their security as a whole. This contribution provides a state-of-the-art description of security issues on FPGAs, both from the system and implementation perspectives. We discuss the advantages of reconfigurable hardware for cryptographic applications, show potential security problems of FPGAs, and provide a list of open research problems. Moreover, we summarize both public and symmetric-key algorithm implementations on FPGAs.