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The 2nd RISC-V Week that will take place over three days from March 30th to April 1st, 2021, online and in Rennes, Paris (Palaiseau) and Grenoble, will gather two events:

  • “3rd RISC-V Meeting” on March 30-31
  • “OpenHW Day” on April 1st

Secure-IC will be involved in the “3rd RISC-V Meeting” on March 30-31

The program will be made of multiple sessions, with a small number of short contributions followed by a time for group discussion. The program will also include a number of tutorials on key RISC-V issues and solutions, and high-level keynotes.

 Sylvain Guilley, co-founder and CTO at Secure-IC, will give a talk on Wednesday, March 31, 15h15 (CET) during Session G – RISC-V extensibility on “Random Number Generation Management at RISC-V API Level”.

His presentation will demonstrate that security applications rely on trustworthy random numbers.

For example, frequent needs are key generation, challenges for fresh session establishment, countermeasures against cyber-physical attacks, etc.

Still, a typical True Random Number Generator (TRNG) is a complex Intellectual Property (IP) block. It comprises a physical entropy source, a Deterministic Random Number Generator (DRBG) to smooth irregularities of the physical source, embedded tests and an error management module. It is paramount that these blocks are property configured and managed.

RISC-V International “Crypto Task Group” has been producing draft documents to simplify the TRNG interface. In this talk, he will detail various benefits obtained by extending the RISC-V API to drive TRNGs:

  • Simple interfaces help prevent the application developers from shooting themselves in their foot by misuse of the TRNG IP; indeed, software development is made easier hence probability of inserting vulnerabilities is reduced.
  • Standardized interface foster independent implementation of some tests and DRBG, which allows to put more trust in the hands of the developer.
  • Some high-end certification schemes require mathematical evidence regarding the TRNG rationale, and the proposed RISC-V interface enables to pass such certifications.

 

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