Trustworthy Reconfigurable Systems

Thomas Feller sheds some light on trust anchor architectures for trustworthy reconfigurable systems. He is presenting novel concepts enhancing the security capabilities of reconfigurable hardware. Almost invisible to the user, many computer systems are embedded into everyday artifacts, such as cars, ATMs, and pacemakers. The significant growth of this market segment within the recent years enforced a rethinking with respect to the security properties and the trustworthiness of these systems. The trustworthiness of a system in general equates to the integrity of its system components. Hardware-based trust anchors provide measures to compare the system configuration to reference measurements. Reconfigurable architectures represent a special case in this regard, as in addition to the software implementation, the underlying hardware architecture may be exchanged, even during runtime.