Current Trends and Future Directions in Security of FPGA Applications with Focus on Thin Clients

Recent high-profile security flaws in conventional desktop and server processors have brought increased interest and attention to the risks posed by proprietary hardware and the closely guarded, obfuscated firmware that tends to accompany it. 1 Adoption of open-source hardware and firmware could potentially address this issue. However, bringing any hardware based intellectual property (IP) to production through traditional methods may affect people plus organizations and may involve legal implications within the product's supply chain [2]. Additionally, a large attack surface poses a problem. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can prospectively address this concern, as they can be programmed and functionally verified directly by organizations which use them.