The application of moving target defense to field programmable gate arrays

Abstract

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are powerful and flexible pieces of hardware used in a variety of applications. These chips are used in monitoring network traffic, guidance systems, cryptographic calculations, medical devices, embedded systems, as well as many other varied uses. They can be used in a large number of ways as well as in a large number of areas, which allows for nearly limitless applications. Outside of being used as a cryptographic processor and network monitoring, these chips are not being used to directly provide software/hardware security. FPGAs are extremely widespread in addition to becoming more integrated into the systems that they are a part of. This leads to vulnerabilities in almost every system that uses these chips. One way to combat these FPGA based vulnerabilities in every system using them, is to implement a Moving Target Defense (MTD) on the chip itself. FPGA based MTD would allow each FPGA to enhance, rather than weaken, the security of a system. This paper incorporates previous applications of Field Programmable Gate Arrays, and explores potential software/hardware security implementations for these chips through the application of Moving Target Defenses.