Technical demonstration session: Software toolflow for FPGA bitstream obfuscation

Reconfigurable hardware, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), are being increasingly deployed in diverse application areas including automotive systems, critical infrastructures, and the emerging Internet of Things (loT), to implement customized designs. However, securing FPGA-based designs against piracy, reverse engineering, and tampering is challenging, especially for systems that require remote upgrade. In many cases, existing solutions based on bitstream encryption may not provide sufficient protection against these attacks. In our paper (Karam et aI., “Robust Bitstream Protection in FPGA-based Systems through Low-Overhead Obfuscation”, ReConFig 2016), we presented a novel obfuscation approach for provably robust protection of FPGA bitstreams with low overhead. In this demonstration, we show how our custom software can integrate with a commercial FPGA toolflow for securing designs on existing hardware.