Publications

FPGA Authentication Methods

Brotz, Jay K.; Hymel, Ross W.; Punnoose, Ratish J.; Mannos, Tom M.; Grant, Neil G.; Evans, Neil E.

One of the greatest challenges facing designers of equipment to be used in a nuclear arms control treaty is how to convince the other party in the treaty to trust its results and functionality. Whether the host provides equipment meant to prove treaty obligations and the inspector needs to gain that trust (commonly referred to as authentication), or the inspector provides this equipment and the host needs to gain this trust (commonly considered to be included in certification), one party generally has higher confidence in the equipment at the start of a treaty regime and the other party needs to gain that confidence prior to use. While we focus on authentication in this document—that is, the inspector gaining confidence in host-provided equipment—our conclusions will likely apply to host certification of inspector-provided equipment.