An FPGA home for device authentication?

The security specialists at Verayo Inc. are trying a new model in the traditional IP core business. Verayo, which began life as PUFCO, using authentication technology licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, started out integrating their circuit-level technology in ASICs developed forfederal agencies who wanted unclonable RFID modules and secure processors.

“PUF,” or Physically Unclonable Functions, refers to a compact multiplexing-arbitration technology used in key generation and authentication. By generating a virtually unlimited number of challenge-response pairs, the PUF block could be used directly in authentication of a device, or in key generation for secondary security applications. When used in hardware-based rights management, for example, PUF-based key generation can tie activation rights directly to a particular device, making it stronger than those based on one-time-programmable memories or MAC addresses.

Mandel Yu, lead design engineer at Verayo, said that the circuit block developed by Verayo could easily be implemented in the standard lookup tables or registers used in most FPGA architectures. The company could have designed a series of ASSPs for sale, or taken the long route of seeking deals with FPGA market leaders for implementing dedicated hard blocks in FPGA architectures. Instead, it is offering an IP license directly to FPGA customers.

Vivel Khandelwal, the company’s directory of marketing, said that such a channel makes sense in recessionary times. There are a variety of ASSPs that Verayo is developing, once the concept of challenge-response authentication gains traction. The concept might work well with the Trusted Computing Group’s Trusted Platform Module, for example.  If customers respond to the PUF architecture, FPGA vendors may be more willing to work with Verayo on hard macros. But in the meantime, Verayo can offer its security technology as a soft implementation method for existing FPGAs. This is interesting from a crypto and security perspective, but also from the perspective of developing new marketing channels for macros in the FPGA world.