A Proof of Concept SRAM-based Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) Key Generation Mechanism for IoT Devices
This addresses security vulnerabilities in IoT devices, but it is an incremental implementation of existing PUF concepts.
This paper tackles the problem of inadequate protection for secret keys stored in IoT device memory by proposing a proof-of-concept SRAM-based Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) for key generation, achieving an adjustable error rate and studying trade-offs in authentication performance.
This paper provides a proof of concept for using SRAM based Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to generate private keys for IoT devices. PUFs are utilized, as there is inadequate protection for secret keys stored in the memory of the IoT devices. We utilize a custom-made Arduino mega shield to extract the fingerprint from SRAM chip on demand. We utilize the concepts of ternary states to exclude the cells which are easily prone to flip, allowing us to extract stable bits from the fingerprint of the SRAM. Using the custom-made software for our SRAM device, we can control the error rate of the PUF to achieve an adjustable memory-based PUF for key generation. We utilize several fuzzy extractor techniques based on using different error correction coding methods to generate secret keys from the SRAM PUF, and study the trade-off between the false authentication rate and false rejection rate of the PUF.