A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs

Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by REPLicated2 on Sunday April 19, 2020 @10:40AM (#22916202)

Depending on your viewpoint, this may actually be a boon for reverse engineering efforts to counter planned obsolescence.

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by segfaultbuserr on Sunday April 19, 2020 @10:58AM (#22916323)

Yes. Unfortunately, it's a double-edged sword. The same technology is needed for the FOSS community to create secure hardware.

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by snvzz on Sunday April 19, 2020 @11:24AM (#22916505)

Security through obscurity? Nah.

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by loeg on Sunday April 19, 2020 @12:06PM (#22916744)

This was security through a cryptographic design. It was just a broken design. If you consider confidential symmetric or privkeys "obscurity," sure, all crypto is obscurity.

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by snvzz on Sunday April 19, 2020 @12:35PM (#22916960)

There's no need to encrypt the keys as you hardcode them into the FPGA, if you control the hardware as you do this.

I certainly don't see how anything FOSS would be affected, and would appreciate concrete examples.

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by johncolanduoni on Sunday April 19, 2020 @05:22PM (#22918903)

This mechanism also included an HMAC, responsible for authenticating the bitstream. That's useful even if the bitstream is public knowledge.

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