Bitstream Encryption and Authentication Using AES-GCM in Dynamically Reconfigurable Systems

A secure and dependable dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) system based on the AES-GCM cipher is developed, where the reconfigurable IP cores are protected by encrypting and authenticating their bitstreams with AES-GCM. In DPR systems, bitstream authentication is essential for avoiding fatal damage caused by inadvertent bitstreams. Although encryption-only systems can prevent bitstream cloning and reverse engineering, they cannot prevent erroneous or malicious bitstreams from being accepted as valid. If a bitstream error is detected after the system has already been partly configured, the system must be reconfigured with an errorless bitstream or at worst rebooted since the DPR changes the hardware architecture itself and the system cannot recover itself to the initial state by asserting a reset signal. In this regard, our system can recover from configuration errors without rebooting. To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first DPR system featuring both bitstream protection and error recovery mechanisms. Additionally, we clarify the relationship between the computation time and the bitstream block size, and derive the optimal internal memory size necessary to achieve the highest throughput. Furthermore, we implemented an AES-GCM-based DPR system targeting the Virtex-5 device on an off-the-shelf board, and demonstrated that all functions of bitstream decryption, verification, configuration, and error recovery work correctly. This paper clarifies the throughput, the hardware utilization, and the optimal memory configuration of said DPR system.