An IP Core Remote Anonymous Activation Protocol

The IP-based design of Systems-on-chip, both for FPGAs and ASICs, is enabling various new business models, where the essential aspect is the decoupling of system integration from the development of the individual cores. Such new scenarios also bring inherently new security challenges for the protection of the intellectual property. On the other hand, online tracking requires some exposure of the user's platform, which may result in compromised privacy. This work relies on a concept borrowed from the trusted computing area, Direct Anonymous Attestation, to enable remote IP licensing and activation mechanisms preserving the full anonymity of the end user, i.e., making it impossible for the Activation Server (AS) in charge of distributing the IP core license to track the user's behavior across the SoC lifecycle. The main findings of this work lie in the definition of an ad-hoc protocol, called Remote Anonymous Activation Protocol (RAAP), as well as a proof-of-concept implementation. The experimental results collected from the prototype confirm the computational feasibility of the proposed protocol on a representative example of a medium-end system-on-chip.