In solving this problem, I think there is no perfect solution right now, just steps in the good direction. Making attacks harder instead of just impossible.
The article is long so it is normal that many people did not read it to the end, which is a shame because I think the conclusion is really important:
"I personally regard Betrusted as more of an evolution toward — rather than an end to — the quest for verifiable, trustworthy hardware. I’ve struggled for years to distill the reasons why openness is insufficient to solve trust problems in hardware into a succinct set of principles. I’m also sure these principles will continue to evolve as we develop a better and more sophisticated understanding of the use cases, their threat models, and the tools available to address them."
It is a quest. It will be made of a lot of partial solutions. FPGA are just easier to inspect and their functions harder to backdoor if you don't know what they will run. Harder but by no means impossible. But at this stage if we can make things 50% harder in 50% of the cases, that's progress.
The article is long so it is normal that many people did not read it to the end, which is a shame because I think the conclusion is really important:
"I personally regard Betrusted as more of an evolution toward — rather than an end to — the quest for verifiable, trustworthy hardware. I’ve struggled for years to distill the reasons why openness is insufficient to solve trust problems in hardware into a succinct set of principles. I’m also sure these principles will continue to evolve as we develop a better and more sophisticated understanding of the use cases, their threat models, and the tools available to address them."
It is a quest. It will be made of a lot of partial solutions. FPGA are just easier to inspect and their functions harder to backdoor if you don't know what they will run. Harder but by no means impossible. But at this stage if we can make things 50% harder in 50% of the cases, that's progress.