Offline Hardware/Software Authentication for Reconfigurable Platforms

Many Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based systems utilize third-party intellectual property (IP) in their development. When they are deployed in non-networked environments, the question raises how this IP can be protected against non-authorized use. We describe an offline authentication scheme for IP modules. The scheme implements mutual authentication of the IP modules and the hardware platform, and enables us to provide authentication and integrity assurances to both the system developer and IP provider. Compared to the Trusted Computing Platform’s approach to hardware, software authentication, our solution is more lightweight and tightly integrates with existing FPGA security features. We are able to demonstrate an implementation of the authentication scheme that requires a symmetric cipher and a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF). In addition to the low hardware requirements, our implementation does not require any on-chip, non-volatile storage.