TinyTPM: A lightweight module aimed to IP protection and trusted embedded platforms

Abstract

Currently, embedded system implementations are increasingly exploiting reconfigurable devices such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Due to the volatile nature of SRAM-based FPGAs it is necessary to secure such systems against intellectual property (IP) theft and overproduction. Additionally, the trustworthy operation of these systems has to be guarded in order to protect the processed data. We propose in this paper a novel cryptographic module called TinyTPM, which enforces trustworthy operation and IP protection for embedded systems. Our approach covers the following two key principles: (i) trustworthy attestation of the embedded system state, (ii) IP protection by providing authenticated and encrypted update procedures for FPGAs. The TinyTPM consumes only a few resources and is therefore well-suited to design secure, efficient, and low cost FPGA-based embedded systems. This architecture has been implemented as a proof-of-concept on top of a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA platform and demonstrates both, security and efficiency.