Efficient RO-PUF for generation of identifiers and keys in resource-constrained embedded systems

The generation of unique identifiers extracted from the physical characteristics of the underlying hardware ensures the protection of electronic devices against counterfeiting and provides security to the data they store and process. This work describes the design of an efficient Physical Unclonable...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Martínez Rodríguez, Macarena Cristina, Rojas Muñoz, Luis F., Camacho Ruiz, Eros, Sánchez Solano, Santiago, Brox Jiménez, Piedad
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/148399
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/148399
https://doi.org/10.3390/cryptography6040051
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Device authentication
Embedded systems
Hardware security
Key generation
Physical unclonable function
Reconfigurable devices
Descripción
Sumario:The generation of unique identifiers extracted from the physical characteristics of the underlying hardware ensures the protection of electronic devices against counterfeiting and provides security to the data they store and process. This work describes the design of an efficient Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) based on the differences in the frequency of Ring Oscillators (ROs) with identical layout due to variations in the technological processes involved in the manufacture of the integrated circuit. The logic resources available in the Xilinx Series-7 programmable devices are exploited in the design to make it more compact and achieve an optimal bit-per-area rate. On the other hand, the design parameters can also be adjusted to provide a high bit-per-time rate for a particular target device. The PUF has been encapsulated as a configurable Intellectual Property (IP) module, providing it with an AXI4-Lite interface to ease its incorporation into embedded systems in combination with soft- or hard-core implementations of general-purpose processors. The capability of the proposed RO-PUF to generate implementation-dependent identifiers has been extensively tested, using a series of metrics to evaluate its reliability and robustness for different configuration options. Finally, in order to demonstrate its utility to improve system security, the identifiers provided by RO-PUFs implemented on different devices have been used in a Helper Data Algorithm (HDA) to obfuscate and retrieve a secret key. © 2022 by the authors.