Photonic Pseudo-Random Number Generator for Internet-of-Things Authentication using a Waveguide based Physical Unclonable Function
This work addresses security challenges for Internet-of-Things systems by providing a hardware-based authentication method, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing physical unclonable function concepts with specific enhancements.
The paper tackles the problem of secure authentication for Internet-of-Things devices by experimentally evaluating a photonic physical unclonable function based on a polymer optical waveguide, which generates high-quality pseudo-random numbers validated through NIST/DIEHARD(ER) suites and enables a mutual authentication scheme compatible with commercial architectures.
In this paper we experimentally evaluate a physical unclonable function based on a polymer optical waveguide, as a time-invariant, replication-resilient, source of entropy. The elevated physical unclonability of our implementation is combined with spatial light modulation and post processing techniques, thus allowing the deterministic generation of an exponentially large pool of unpredictable responses. The quality of the generated numbers is validated through NIST/DIEHARD(ER) suites, whereas the overall security of the scheme is benchmarked assuming attackers with elevated privileges in terms of system access. Finally, based on the demonstrated key features, we present and analyze a mutual authentication implementation scenario which is fully compatible with state-of-the-art commercial Internet-Of-Things architectures