Physical unclonable function: architectures, applications and challenges for dependable security

Abstract

Physical unclonable function (PUF) is hardware-specific security primitive for providing cryptographic functionalities that are applicable for secure communication among the embedded devices. The physical structure of PUF is considered to be easy to manufacture but hard or impossible to replicate due to variations in its manufacturing process. However, a large community of analytics believes hardware-based PUF has paved the way for its realisation in providing dependable security. In this study, the authors have thoroughly explored the architecture, applications, requirements, and challenges of PUF that provide security solutions. For presenting the literature, they have designed a taxonomy where PUFs are divided under two main categories, including non-silicon and silicon-based PUF. Currently, there is no comprehensive survey that highlights the comparison and usability of memory-based and analogue/mixed-signal based PUF that are considered to be suitable as compared to counterparts. In a similar vein, they have presented the network-specific application scenarios in wireless sensor network, wireless body area network and Internet of Things and then identified the strong, weak and controlled PUF in a categorical manner. Moreover, they have presented a number of prospective limitations that are identified in PUF structures and then identified the open research challenges to meet the desired security levels.

Non-Invasive Challenge Response Authentication for Voice Transactions with Smart Home Behavior

“…Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) are mechanisms that can be used in challenge-response protocols as sources of randomness. By using their physical characteristics (PUFs can be silicon or non-silicon based), strong PUFs can generate large Challenge Response Pair (CRP) spaces [ 69 , 70 ]. Another role of PUFs in authentication protocols regards session key generation [ 71 ].…”

SRAM-PUF-Based Entities Authentication Scheme for Resource-Constrained IoT Devices

“…PUF is a security primitive that exploits the uncontrolled and unavoidable physical variations generated during the fabrication process of the integrated circuits (ICs). Since the variations sometimes cause random, but stable, mismatches, they can be used as fingerprints, private secret keys, or as a root of trust in physical system structures [15].…”

“…Besides, adding a new component to the PUF unit can increase the CRPs exponentially. The weak PUF, on the other side, has few CRPs, and adding a new component to the PUF unit can increase the CRPs linearly [15].…”

“…While early proposed PUF types had their own special designs [15], a recent trend is to get unique features from the already deployed devices without adding new equipment or replacing the existing devices. Some researchers tried to extract a fingerprint from the devices' memories, such as SRAM-PUF [14], DRAM-PUF [23], and flash-PUF [24].…”

“…The startup values of SRAM cells are the entropy source of SRAM-PUF. Since that each cell can only generate 1-bit output, adding a new SRAM cell can only increase the CRPs by 1, and that is why the SRAM-PUF is classified as a weak PUF [15]. For SRAM-PUF to be used in authentication, the cells' addresses are used as a challenge, and the startup values stored in the corresponding cells are the response.…”