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 firmnoodle on Sunday April 19, 2020 @10:51AM (#22916274)

No. It means people will be able to copy FPGA's like was possible in the 2000's. It also means that the design in an FPGA could be altered by an unauthorized 3rd party without having to physically replace the device.

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by londons_explore on Sunday April 19, 2020 @12:11PM (#22916773)

Some FPGA's require bitstream encryption. On those devices, breaking this encryption is the first of many steps to making an opensource toolchain

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by eqvinox on Sunday April 19, 2020 @12:40PM (#22916997)

This is not the case for the FPGAs targeted here. Encryption is optional on Xilinx 7-Series. Also there already is an open source toolchain coming up for them.

http://www.clifford.at/yosys/

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Re:A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Seri... by floatingatoll on Sunday April 19, 2020 @12:38PM (#22916983)

And is also the first of many steps to making a rootkit toolchain that can infect your devices when they’re in the possession of an attacker.

Any device that allows an anonymous third party to modify it is a device that cannot be trusted once it’s been handed to a third party.

Would you be willing to register for an identity certificate to make use of an open source toolchain with your registered device, so that you could be certain others had not silently rootkit’d it and were spying on your work?

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