ShapeShifter: Protecting FPGAs from Side-Channel Attacks with Isofunctional Heterogeneous Modules

Mahya Morid Ahmadi, Lilas Alrahis, Ozgur Sinanoglu, Muhammad Shafique

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Cloud service providers are interested in deploying multi-tenant Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for virtualized computation platforms. A primary concern towards such shared FPGA platforms is ensuring the security of critical applications (such as encryption cores) against hardware-based attacks, such as remote power Side-Channel Attacks (SCAs) intended to steal secret assets like encryption keys. To address this issue, we propose ShapeShifter, a novel defense methodology based on design diversity that generates isofunctional variants of the target application at the design stage using different synthesis, placement, and routing procedures. ShapeShifter leverages the dynamic partial reconfiguration feature of modern FPGAs to exchange the variants at run-time, causing dynamic variations in the power trace (vertical obfuscation) and introducing misalignment in the time domain (horizontal obfuscation) to thwart SCAs. ShapeShifter successfully thwarts the Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack on an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) implementation, ensuring unsuccessful key byte recovery for up to 10× more traces. It also decreases the CPA value by 0.69×, reducing the attacker's confidence in key recovery.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2023 IEEE 29th International Symposium on On-Line Testing and Robust System Design, IOLTS 2023
EditorsAlessandro Savino, Mihalis Maniatakos, Stefano di Carlo, Dimitris Gizopoulos
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9798350341355
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Event29th IEEE International Symposium on On-Line Testing and Robust System Design, IOLTS 2023 - Crete, Greece
Duration: Jul 3 2023Jul 5 2023

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2023 IEEE 29th International Symposium on On-Line Testing and Robust System Design, IOLTS 2023

Conference

Conference29th IEEE International Symposium on On-Line Testing and Robust System Design, IOLTS 2023
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityCrete
Period7/3/237/5/23

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Signal Processing
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

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