
Intel partners with SecureRF for future-proof FPGA security
The first security toolkit, available now, addresses Intel’s DE10-Nano development board built around the Cyclone V FPGA, along with high-speed DDR3 memory. To support fast and easy implementation, SecureRF is providing a complete SDK and has authored a technical article on authenticating remote devices with a Cyclone V System-on-Chip (SoC) FPGA that can now be found on the Intel Developer Zone website.
Intel FPGA-SoC devices are well suited for a wide variety of functions, including acting as an IoT gateway that can authenticate and control hundreds of remote endpoints. Low-resource endpoints, often running on 8- or 16-bit processors, limit the options for strong security that must also run on an IoT gateway. Legacy security methods such as ECC are computationally too expensive. SecureRF’s security toolkit includes Ironwood Key Agreement Protocol (Ironwood KAP) and Walnut Digital Signature Algorithm (WalnutDSA), which are designed to run on the smallest processors. Basing its security toolkit on Group Theoretic Cryptography methods, SecureRF claims its solutions are up to 60 times more efficient than ECC, consume up to 140 times less energy, and are quantum-resistant to all known attacks.
Developers can download an SD card image of SecureRF’s security tools from its Security Toolkit webpage. The image includes WalnutDSA and Ironwood, as well as three separate demonstrations showing the operation of the signature algorithm and the key agreement protocol. Ironwood enables two endpoints to generate a shared secret over an open channel, while WalnutDSA allows one device to generate a document that can be verified by another device. Both methods are implemented partially in software on the Intel Cyclone V’s ARM Cortex-A9 and partially in the FPGA’s fabric. All the compute-intensive routines are executed in hardware, for better performance.
SecureRF – www.secureRF.com
