Communications of the ACM
Critical 'Starbleed' Vulnerability in FPGA Chips Identified
Scientists at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum's Horst Gortz Institute for Information Technology Security and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy in Germany have identified a vulnerability in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips.
Credit: HGI, RUB
Scientists at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum's Horst Gortz Institute for Information Technology Security and the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy in Germany have discovered a vulnerability in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips.
The "Starbleed" bug allows hackers to completely commandeer the chips and their functionalities; replacing the chips is the only remedy, because the vulnerability becomes integrated with the hardware.
The researchers analyzed FPGAs from Xilinx, one of the two leading FPGA manufacturers. They exploited an update and fallback feature in the FPGAs to successfully decrypt the encrypted bitstream file used to program the chips, and to access and modify file content.
The Max Planck Institute's Christof Paar said, "Although detailed knowledge is required, an attack can eventually be carried out remotely, [and] the attacker does not even have to have physical access to the FPGA."
From Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany)
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