High-Level Synthesis of Security Properties via Software-Level Abstractions. (arXiv:2104.01446v1 [cs.CR])

High-level synthesis (HLS) is a key component for the hardware acceleration
of applications, especially thanks to the diffusion of reconfigurable devices
in many domains, from data centers to edge devices. HLS reduces development
times by allowing designers to raise the abstraction level and use automated
methods for hardware generation. Since security concerns are becoming more and
more relevant for data-intensive applications, we investigate how to abstract
security properties and use HLS for their integration with the accelerator
functionality. We use the case of dynamic information flow tracking, showing
how classic software-level abstractions can be efficiently used to hide
implementation details to the designers.