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Behavior of temperature dependent SRAM-PUFs, and consequences for secret-key capacity

C.J. Kusters, Tanya Ignatenko, F.M.J. Willems

Published Jan 1, 2017• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are a resource for generating and sharing secret keys. The mutual information between two respective observations of the same PUF gives an upper bound for the achievable secret-key rate of a secret-sharing scheme that relies on this PUF. This mutual information can be increased by including side information about the source. We show for a given statistical model of the SRAM-PUFs, how side information can be estimated from multiple observations of an SRAM cell. Finally, we calculate the achievable increased secret-key rate given the estimated side information.

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Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are a resource for generating and sharing secret keys. The mutual information between two respective observations of the same PUF gives an upper bound for the achievable secret-key rate of a secret-sharing scheme that relies on this PUF. This mutual information can be increased by including side information about the source. We show for a given statistical model of the SRAM-PUFs, how side information can be estimated from multiple observations of an SRAM cell. Finally, we calculate the achievable increased secret-key rate given the estimated side information.
An information-theoretic model is presented for a general quantum physically unclonable function (QPUF) that generates a bipartite classical-quantum output. We first define achievable secret key rate versus privacy leakage rate pairs featuring perfect secrecy and uniform distribution of the secret key. To analyze the secret key generation from this QPUF model, we focus on two cases: first, without any constraints on the storage of public information, i.e., the helper data, and second, with rate constraints on it. This, in turn, provides a solution for the case of privacy leakage constraint. We calculate the maximum secret key that a QPUF can generate and derive the capacity region corresponding to this definition of achievability.
Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have emerged as critical primitives for secure authentication and key generation. However, classical PUFs are increasingly vulnerable to machine learning and quantum-enabled attacks. Quantum PUFs, leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics, provide a promising alternative offering information-theoretic security. In this work, we present an information-theoretic framework for two key applications of QPUFs: secret key generation and secure data storage. We rigorously characterize the trade-offs between achievable key and storage rates under various privacy leakage constraints—unconditional, conditional, and zero-leakage—extending classical results into the quantum domain. We derive single-letter capacity expressions based on Holevo information and analyze the impact of shared private randomness on achieving zero privacy leakage. Our results establish fundamental performance limits for QPUF-based security systems and lay the foundation for cryptographic key generation and storage protocols in future quantum-resilient communication infrastructures.
We consider a Physical-Unclonable-Function (PUF)-based authentication process. We define achievable secret-key rate versus privacy-leakage rate pairs featuring perfect secrecy and uniform distribution of the secret-key. We derive the capacity region corresponding to this definition of achievability and thus show that it equals the known capacity region corresponding to weak secrecy. We define achievability requiring a small false acceptance probability and show that the corresponding capacity region is the same. We generalize our result for perfect secrecy to the case of a compound source. We also discuss the problem of secure data storage using data from a PUF when the statistics of the PUF are not perfectly known.
This study investigates secret-key generation for device authentication using physical identifiers, such as responses from physical unclonable functions (PUFs). The system includes two legitimate terminals (encoder and decoder) and an eavesdropper (Eve), each with access to different measurements of the identifier. From the device identifier, the encoder generates a secret key, which is securely stored in a private database, along with helper data that is saved in a public database accessible by the decoder for key reconstruction. Eve, who also has access to the public database, may use both her own measurements and the helper data to attempt to estimate the secret key and identifier. Our setup focuses on authentication scenarios where channel statistics are uncertain, with the involved parties employing multiple antennas to enhance signal reception. Our contributions include deriving inner and outer bounds on the optimal trade-off among secret-key, storage, and privacy-leakage rates for general discrete sources, and showing that these bounds are tight for Gaussian sources.
An information-theoretic analysis of secure authentication based on Quantum Physically Unclonable Functions (QPUF) is presented in this paper. The proposed model employs a secret key generated through QPUF to authenticate pre-enrolled user and device identities while maintaining secrecy and limiting privacy leakage. We analyze the system's robustness against an active adversary who exploits publicly available data to impersonate legitimate users with fraudulent inputs. Our analysis focuses on characterizing the capacity region of the adversary's false acceptance exponent alongside the privacy leakage under reliability conditions. We further demonstrate that the achievable capacity region in the quantum domain surpasses that of classical systems. Additionally, we derive an optimal trade-off among the false acceptance exponent, public storage rate, and privacy leakage rate, offering key insights into the system's asymptotic performance.
Physical unclonable functions (PUFs), physical objects that are practically unclonable because of their andom and uncontrollable manufacturing variations, are becoming increasingly popular as security primitives and unique identifiers in a fully digitized world. One of the central PUF premises states that both friends and foes, both legitimate manufacturers and external attackers alike, cannot clone a PUF, producing two instances that are the same. Using the latest nanofabrication techniques, we show that this premise is not always met: We demonstrate the possibility of effective PUF duplication through sophisticated manufacturers by producing 63 copies of a non-trivial optical scattering structure which exhibit essentially the same scattering behavior. The remaining minuscule differences are close to or below noise levels, whence the duplicates have to be considered fully equivalent from a PUF perspective. The possibility for manufacturer-based optical PUF duplication has positive and negative consequences at the same time: While fully breaking the security of certain schemes, it enables new applications, too. For example, it facilitates unforgeable labels for valuable items; the first key-free group identification schemes over digital networks; or new types of encryption/decryption devices that do not contain secret keys.