Secure Runtime Reconfiguration of FPGAs via Lightweight Authenticated Encryption for IoT Systems

In this work, a custom solution for using encrypted and authenticated partial bitstreams with the open source reconfiguration controller CoRQ is developed. The implementation consists of an FPGA logic design, a software driver, and software for encrypting bitstreams. Two different AEAD ciphers are supported AES-GCM and Ascon. After encrypting the bitstreams with one of the ciphers they can be transferred to the FPGA, where they are decrypted and the authenticity is checked. Then they can be reconfigured onto the FPGA through CoRQ. Our results show that the usage of Ascon keeps the performance in the same range while being significantly less resource-needy.