Evaluation of blockchain techniques to ensure secure access on remote FPGA laboratories

Laboratories are part of the learning process of students from the most diverse areas of knowledge. However, many problems related to physical accessibility and resources become a challenge for teachers and educational institutions. These disadvantages make remote labs, especially computing-oriented labs such as FPGA labs, become very popular in the current scenario. It happens because these labs provide a faster way to guarantee quality results equal to the physical model, reducing costs and offering access to students who did not have access to the labs. However, the security system must be implemented and improved continuously, following the advance of technology. This work aims to develop a security and access control system for remote labs using blockchain techniques to standardize and keep the security process up-to-date with new security techniques. The primary authentication processes, authorization and second verification are discussed and adapted for the remote experimentation scenario. This research is part of an ongoing project to create a security system for remote FPGA labs. At the end of the project, we hope to deliver a functional FPGA platform with standardized security processes following blockchain techniques. The project has researchers from the Laboratory at Distance (L@d) of the TÉLUQ University in Montreal, Canada and the Remote Experimentation Laboratory (RExLab) of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) Brazil collaborating.