A Cryptographic SoC for Robust Protection of Secret Keys in IPTV DRM Systems

The security level of an internet protocol television (IPTV) digital right management (DRM) system ultimately relies on protection of secret keys. Well known devices for the key protection include smartcards and battery backup SRAMs (BB-SRAMs); however, these devices could be vulnerable to various physical attacks. In this paper, we propose a secure and cost-effective design of a cryptographic system on chip (SoC) that integrates the BB-SRAM with a cell-based design technique. The proposed SoC provides robust safeguard against the physical attacks, and satisfies high-speed and low-price requirements of IPTV set-top boxes. Our implementation results show that the maximum encryption rate of the SoC is 633Mb/s. In order to verify the data retention capabilities, we made a prototype chip using 0.18µm standard cell technology. The experimental results show that the integrated BB-SRAM can reliably retain data with a 1.4µA leakage current.