Securing bitstream integrity, confidentiality and authenticity in reconfigurable mobile heterogeneous systems

The mobile application market is rapidly growing and changing, offering always brand new software to install in increasingly powerful devices. Mobile devices become pervasive and more heterogeneous, embedding latest technologies such as multicore architectures, special-purpose circuits and reconfigurable logic. In a future mobile market scenario where reconfigurable systems are employed, new security concerns are introduced. In particular, protecting the Intellectual Property of the exchanged soft cores is a serious concern and their integrity, confidentiality and authenticity must be preserved. In this paper we propose an architecture suitable for the secure deployment of soft cores in FPGA based mobile heterogeneous systems where multiple independent actors are involved. Finally, we provide a prototype implementation of the proposed architecture.