FPGAs & Side Communication Channels - Black Hat Risks and White Hat Benefits

Опубликовано 17 августа 2016, 21:55

For several reasons, the flexibility and adaptability of FPGAs also make them more vulnerable to intended or unintended communication via side-channel mechanisms. While such side-channels might be used in positive ways by system designers to overcome device limitations or to implement post-fabrication bug fixes, they might also be used in negative ways to circumvent security features or divulge private data. In this talk, we discuss a new capability that may dramatically increase both the capabilities and risks associated with FPGA side-channel communication - an FPGA-based data receiver. We describe and demonstrate three ways of implementing non-traditional and potentially latent communication mechanisms: thermal modulation, timing modification and pin hijacking.