Cryptography on Hardware Platforms (WS 2024/25)

Content

This course teaches how to implement cryptographic algorithms efficiently on hardware platforms. It covers hardware implementation aspects of symmetric-key and asymmetric-key cryptographic primitives, true and pseudo-random number generation, physically unclonable functions, as well as the basics of homomorphic encryption. In the practical assignments, you will be given reference proof-of-concept software implementations and you will build hardware-software codesign architectures for them.

Material

Previous course information: WS 2023/24.
Questions and discussions with other students are possible in the #cryptoengineering channel in Discord.
All materials will be pushed to this Git repository and linked here:

Lecture materials:

• 00_Crypto_HW2024_general_information
• 01_Modular_Arithmetic
• 02_Integer_Arithmetic
• 03_Post-quantum public-key crypto basics
• 04_Polynomial arithmetic part-I
• 05_Polynomial arithmetic part-II
  • Magazin article presenting an overall view
  • CHES paper on two-coefficient butterfly optimization (see Alg1 to Alg2 transition, pipelining)
• 06_Random number generation
• 07_Post processing of TRNG bits
• 08_Statistical tests for TRNG bits
• 09_Fully Homomorphic Encryption
• 10_In-Memory Computing and Hardware Trojans

Practical materials:

• 01_verilog_review
• 02_vivado-tutorial (Vivado Tutorial Project)
• 02 Vivado tutorial continued and Carry Save Adders (Vivado Project)
• 03_Intro_to_FPGAs (Vivado Project for DSP and BRAM instantiation)
• 04_CryptoCoreTutorial (Video)
• 05_Pipelining Example
• 06_Assignment 2 Presentation (Video)

Assignments:

• Assignment 1 - Task 1 Description
• Wrapper Module for Implementation Runs
• CryptoCore Template Project - Assignment 1
• Python Code for Barrett reduction
• Python Code for NTT
• Assignment 1 - Complete Description
• Assignment 2 Description
• CryptoCore Template Project - Assignment 2

Paper Presentation:

• Homomorphic encryption accelerator
• Optimization methods for integer multiplication
• Toom-Cook based polynomial multiplication
• Systolic finite field multiplier

Tools:

• For assignments and practical sessions, we will use Xilinx Vitis/Vivado 2022.2 (Vitis installation includes Vivado by default). Here you can find the installation guide for Xilinx Vitis 2022.2 for Ubuntu Linux.

Administrative Information

Previous Knowledge

Cryptography, Digital design (e.g., DSD course).

Prerequisites Curriculum

See position in the curriculum

Objective

Students will learn how to design cryptographic algorithms on hardware and hardware-software co-design platforms.
Learning goals:

• FPGA-based design flow, prototyping in real FPGA, and performance benchmarking.
• Problem-oriented hardware development for cryptography.
• Standard and performance-optimized implementation techniques.
• Secure implementation techniques.

Besides learning how to implement cryptographic algorithms securely and efficiently, you learn design methods for FPGA. This is a highly relevant skill for the semiconductor industry since FPGAs are widely used for prototyping as well as product development.

Language

English

Teaching Method

Lectures and practicals will be in-person (2 hours lecture + 1 hour practical session).

How to get a grade

The grading is based on two practical assignments. Students will work on them in a team of two.

Registration

https://online.tugraz.at/tug_online/ee/rest/pages/slc.tm.cp/course-registration/542619

Lecture Dates

Date	Begin	End	Location	Event	Type	Comment
2025/01/07	09:00	11:00	Seminarraum	Abhaltung	VU	fix/Practical
2025/01/13	10:00	11:00	Seminarraum	Abhaltung	VU	fix/Lecture
2025/01/14	09:00	11:00	Seminarraum	Abhaltung	VU	fix/Practical
2025/01/20	10:00	11:00	Seminarraum	Abhaltung	VU	fix/Lecture
2025/01/21	09:00	11:00	Seminarraum	Abhaltung	VU	fix/Practical
2025/01/27	10:00	11:00	Seminarraum	Abhaltung	VU	fix/Lecture
2025/01/28	09:00	11:00	Seminarraum	Abhaltung	VU	fix/Practical

Lecturers