NIOS II Based Secure Test Wrapper Design for Testing Cryptographic Algorithms

Abstract

Cryptographic algorithms require an infrastructural support for testing their efficiency against security attacks. Many methods are available for testing the cryptographic primitives. One of them is to test the algorithms by using cryptographic chips. These chips are not suitable for general purpose algorithms. Though built-in self-tests are applied to test the intellectual properties of these chips, they still suffer from many problems such as side channel attacks, black-holes, high area overhead, and many more. To overcome the above mentioned defects, a test wrapper is designed and tested using NIOS II economy soft core processor. NIOS II soft-core processors perform well for testing the cryptographic algorithms.  NIOS II's soft core processor and cryptographic algorithms are utilized for testing and execution. Tests with respects to area optimization, memory and speed are performed and the results are provided.