Reconfigurable Cryptographic Processor

Abstract — This paper presents the Trusted Computing problem and proposes a reconfigurable approach to the existing solution, the Trusted Computing module chip. The new Trusted Computing approach to computation provides additional safety to the user’s data and a higher protection against malicious attacks to the systems. The features proposed by the Trusted Computing Group include secure I/O, memory curtaining, sealed storage and remote attestation, which have a strong dependency on the existing algorithms. A overview to the performance of the already implemented encryption algorithms required for the Trusted Computing is also presented. As a test and prototype platform the Molen [19] computational paradigm has been used. The results suggest that a significant throughput can be achieved with a reduce device occupation. The most significant symmetrical and hashing function are the AES [11] algorithm and the SHA [10] hashing functions. The usage of these cores with a polymorphic approach, suggest that processing throughputs above 1Gbit/s can be achieved with a low device occupation. Preliminary figures for the whirlpool hashing function, recently proposed, is also presented. Future research direction are also presented