Real-Time Detection of Bitstream Vulnerabilities in FPGAs

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are increasingly used in critical applications and as versatile platforms for research, prototyping, and education. Their reprogrammable nature, however, makes them vulnerable to security threats, particularly through bitstream vulnerabilities. This paper presents a new approach for the real-time detection and mitigation of such vulnerabilities. We introduce BitVulLLM, a fine-tuned variant of LLAMA2 specifically used for FPGA bitstream vulnerability detection. As part of this research, we generated a comprehensive dataset of FPGA bitstreams, including secure and vulnerable configurations, to address the challenges of detecting and rectifying security flaws. Our method not only identifies vulnerabilities with high precision, but also generates secure bitstreams, significantly bolstering the security of embedded systems. This research represents a significant advancement in safeguarding FPGA applications and other use cases from cyber threats, improving the overall performance and reliability of embedded systems and hardware security.