METHOD FOR VERIFYING AT RUNTIME OF A HARDWARE-APPLICATION COMPONENT A CURRENT CONFIGURATION SETTING OF AN EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT PROVIDED BY A CONFIGURABLE HARDWARE MODULE

摘要

Incoming and outgoing communication of a hardware-application component (HAC) is monitored and controlled at runtime of the hardware-application component. In this way, a kind of firewall (NBF, SBF) is provided for ensuring secure and unaltered operation of a hardware-application (HA) performing security-critical functionalities on a field-programmable gate array (CHM). The hardware-application component may interact with other components directly and/or via an on-chip bus. The monitoring of incoming and/or outgoing communication is particularly advantageous when using third party hardware-applications or software applications, i.e., applications developed by untrusted parties. Another advantage is the possibility of monitoring and controlling all the communication between hardware-applications, hardware- and software applications, hardware-applications and peripherals (PD), 10 controllers, etc. It is beneficial especially in case a hardware-application is compromised and tries to compromise the rest of the embedded device (ED), or in case a corrupted software application tries to compromise the associated hardware-application at runtime.