Partial FPGA bitstream encryption enabling hardware DRM in mobile environments

Abstract

The concept of digital right management (DRM) has become extremely important in current mobile environments. This paper shows how partial bitstream encryption can allow the secure distribution of hardware applications resembling the mechanisms of traditional software DRM. Building on the recent developments towards the secure distribution of hardware cores, the paper demonstrates a prototypical implementation of a user mobile device supporting such distribution mechanisms. The prototype extends the Android operating system with support for hardware reconfigurability and showcases the interplay of novel security concepts enabled by hardware DRM, the advantages of a design flow based on high-level synthesis, and the opportunities provided by current software-rich reconfigurable Systems-on-Chips. Relying on this prototype, we also collected extensive quantitative results demonstrating the limited overhead incurred by the secure distribution architecture.