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PUFBind: PUF-enabled lightweight program binary authentication for FPGA-based embedded systems
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DOI：10.1016/j.sysarc.2026.104006.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based embedded systems are often deployed in security-sensitive applications. However, even with authenticated hardware components, compromised software can severely jeopardize the overall system security. We propose a novel low-overhead hardware-software co-design solution that utilizes Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to ensure the authenticity of program binaries for microprocessors/microcontrollers mapped on the FPGA. Our technique binds a program binary to a specific target FPGA through a PUF signature, performs runtime hardware authentication before program execution, and allows execution of the binary only after successful authentication. After a one-time software-assisted enrollment phase, the runtime authentication step of the proposed scheme operates in a hardware-only bare-metal mode (no system software requirement), and is conceptually portable to FPGA and ASIC platforms supporting a suitable PUF primitive. Our scheme requires no modification to the original functional hardware design other than the integration of an authentication-controller, However, it augments the program binary with a 256-bit hardware-bound authentication signature. We successfully demonstrate a prototype implementation of the scheme that validates an 4 kB Block RAM (BRAM)-based program binary on an AMD/Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA using a PicoBlaze soft microcontroller, and the AMD/Xilinx Vivado toolchain, comparing its hardware resource footprint and performance with other existing solutions.
Keywords:
Cryptographic hash function
Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)
Physical Unclonable Function (PUF)
Program binary authentication
SHA-256
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