Hardware-accelerated SSH on self-reconfigurable systems

The performance of security applications can be greatly improved by accelerating the cryptographic algorithms in hardware. In this paper, an implementation of the secure shell (SSH) application is presented. A self-reconfigurable platform based on a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA has been employed to implement a MicroBlaze-based embedded system, which executes SSH under the uCLinux operative system. Run-time reconfiguration is used to change the cryptographic coprocessors utilized for data ciphering. The performance of SSH has been improved and, in comparison to other alternatives not using reconfiguration, a reduction of the area requirements was also achieved.