Multi-Core Multi-Rule VeBPF Firewall for Secure FPGA IoT Device Deployments

FPGAs are often deployed in IoT devices: sensor technology is advancing rapidly and microcontrollers may be unable to handle the needed throughput. But with their connections to the internet and only basic system support, IoT devices may be easy targets of cyberattacks. Current FPGA-based SmartNIC defenses against cyberattacks, however, are mostly applicable in cloud deployments. In order to mitigate cyberattacks on resource-limited IoT devices, we have developed a multi-core multi-rule VeBPF (Verilog extended Berkeley Packet Filter) firewall for FPGA-based IoT devices. This VeBPF firewall accepts standard eBPF bytecode as firewall rules; these rules are run by VeBPF CPU cores. Any number of VeBPF cores can be generated by specifying the N
VeBPF
parameter.