Paper 2003/119 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2003/119 ↗

How Secure Are FPGAs in Cryptographic Applications?

Thomas Wollinger
Christof Paar
Abstract

The use of FPGAs for cryptographic applications is highly attractive for a variety of reasons but at the same time there are many open issues related to the general security of FPGAs. This contribution attempts to provide a state-of-the-art description of this topic. First, the advantages of reconfigurable hardware for cryptographic applications are discussed from a systems perspective. Second, potential security problems of FPGAs are described in detail, followed by a proposal of a some countermeasure. Third, a list of open research problems is provided. Even though there have been many contributions dealing with the algorithmic aspects of cryptographic schemes implemented on FPGAs, this contribution appears to be the first comprehensive treatment of system and security aspects.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Publication info
Preprint.
History
2003-06-06: last updated
2003-06-06: published
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2003/119
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2003/119,
      author = {Thomas Wollinger and Christof Paar},
      title = {How Secure Are FPGAs in Cryptographic Applications?},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2003/119},
      year = {2003},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2003/119}
}
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