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IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)

Practical Evaluation of a Quantum Physical Unclonable Function and Design of an Authentication Scheme

Franco Cirillo, Christian Esposito

Published Sep 15, 2024• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With the increase of digital devices, the need for robust authentication mechanisms has become crucial. Traditional methods relying on cryptographic key management are susceptible to various risks, particularly the exposure of keys to interception or theft. As cyber threats evolve, the short-comings of these methods are accentuated, necessitating more secure solutions. Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have emerged as a potential alternative, utilizing inherent hardware variations for device authentication without stored secrets. However, recent studies reveal vulnerabilities in conventional PUF implementations. Simultaneously, there's a growing recognition for authentication mechanisms tailored for quantum devices. This recognition has prompted the exploration of Quantum PUFs (QPUFs), which represent a promising solution to enhance security and reliability, leveraging the unique properties of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we propose a novel approach using QPUFs for device authentication that does not require any quantum communication channel or even quantum memory. We design a quantum circuit to serve as a QPUF, evaluating metrics such as instability, randomness, and uniqueness. Additionally, we devise an authentication scheme that exploits the challenge-response paradigm, taking advantage of the distinctive properties of quantum PUFs. Furthermore, we delineate a threat model to identify and mitigate potential risks associated with the authentication process. By assessing the proposed QPUFs efficacy on real real quantum hardware provided by IBM, this research contributes to the advancement of secure authentication protocols in quantum era.

DOI
10.1109/qce60285.2024.00161

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With the increase of digital devices, the need for robust authentication mechanisms has become crucial. Traditional methods relying on cryptographic key management are susceptible to various risks, particularly the exposure of keys to interception or theft. As cyber threats evolve, the short-comings of these methods are accentuated, necessitating more secure solutions. Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have emerged as a potential alternative, utilizing inherent hardware variations for device authentication without stored secrets. However, recent studies reveal vulnerabilities in conventional PUF implementations. Simultaneously, there's a growing recognition for authentication mechanisms tailored for quantum devices. This recognition has prompted the exploration of Quantum PUFs (QPUFs), which represent a promising solution to enhance security and reliability, leveraging the unique properties of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we propose a novel approach using QPUFs for device authentication that does not require any quantum communication channel or even quantum memory. We design a quantum circuit to serve as a QPUF, evaluating metrics such as instability, randomness, and uniqueness. Additionally, we devise an authentication scheme that exploits the challenge-response paradigm, taking advantage of the distinctive properties of quantum PUFs. Furthermore, we delineate a threat model to identify and mitigate potential risks associated with the authentication process. By assessing the proposed QPUFs efficacy on real real quantum hardware provided by IBM, this research contributes to the advancement of secure authentication protocols in quantum era.
As quantum technologies advance, ensuring secure authentication of quantum devices has become increasingly important. Existing methods, often relying on stored cryptographic keys, are vulnerable to physical and side-channel attacks. Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) offer a promising alternative by leveraging quantum phenomena such as superposition, entanglement, and quantum noise to produce unique, unclonable responses. However, many existing QPUF designs are based on simulations or report only idealized, best-case results. This work presents and evaluates a set of QPUF circuits on IBM’s real quantum hardware, assessing their performance in terms of instability, randomness, and uniqueness to identify the most effective configurations. Our results show that specific configurations can achieve a positive balance between stability and device distinguishability, reaching 0.05 instability, 0.48 uniqueness, and 0.75 randomness. These findings provide a solid foundation for implementing robust authentication protocols tailored for quantum devices in real-world settings.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has ushered in significant advancements in networked technologies, yet it simultaneously raises concerns about the security and privacy of connected devices. Traditional authentication methods based on cryptographic protocols are increasingly vulnerable to attacks as the number of devices grows and attackers develop more sophisticated strategies. In this paper, we propose a novel quantum-based authentication method using Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) to address the security challenges in IoT devices. Quantum PUFs exploit the inherent quantum properties of devices to generate unique, unclonable responses to challenges, providing a high level of security and resilience against attacks such as cloning, spoofing, and interception. We present the architecture of the proposed quantum authentication system, discuss the challenge-response protocol, and evaluate the system’s performance. Experimental results show that this approach offers strong security guarantees with minimal computational overhead. We Evaluate the Security, Scalability of our approach in simulated adverse IoT environment.
Quantum Physically Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) are emerging hardware primitives that harness inherent quantum principle to produce device-specific challenge–response behavior. By embedding quantum-mechanical "fingerprints" into devices, QPUFs can derive unique cryptographic keys and identities, yielding robust hardware roots of trust. This paper systematically reviews QPUF principles, architectures, and security properties, and explores their integration into next-generation networking paradigms with industrial demonstrations. We detail how QPUFs can enable secure device authentication, key generation across quantum communication links, 6G wireless, IoT/edge deployments emphasizing practical implementation strategies and system integration in future networks along with technical challenges. Through this comprehensive analysis, we highlight the transformative potential of QPUFs in delivering hardware-rooted, information-theoretic security for interconnected networks, and outline directions for further research.
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) provide hardware-level security by exploiting intrinsic randomness to produce device-unique responses. However, machine learning and side-channel attacks increasingly undermine their classical assumptions, calling for new approaches to ensure unforgeability. Quantum mechanics naturally supports this goal through intrinsic randomness and the no-cloning theorem, motivating the study of Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs). Yet, existing QPUF models often assume ideal unitary dynamics, neglecting non-unitary effects such as decoherence and dissipation that arise in real quantum devices. This work introduces a new class of non-unitary QPUFs that leverage open quantum system dynamics as a foundation for security. Three architectures are proposed: the Dissipative QPUF (D-QPUF), which uses amplitude damping as an entropy source; the Measurement-Feedback QPUF (MF-QPUF), which employs mid-circuit measurements and conditional unitaries; and the Lindbladian QPUF (L-QPUF), which models Markovian noise via the Lindblad master equation and Trotter-Suzuki decomposition. Simulation results show that these non-unitary designs achieve strong uniqueness, uniformity, and unforgeability, with controllable reliability trade-offs from stochastic noise. The L-QPUF, in particular, exhibits exponential modeling resistance under limited challenge-response access. By reframing environmental noise as a constructive resource, this work establishes a framework for noise-aware quantum hardware authentication and highlights non-unitary evolution as a viable foundation for post-quantum security.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing has introduced a critical need for secure quantum device attestation to ensure that devices involved in computations are authentic.Existing solutions for quantum device attestation often rely on quantum memory or lack adaptability across diverse quantum computing platforms. To address these limitations, we propose a novel Quantum Physical Unclonable Function (QPUF)-based device attestation scheme that leverages the inherent noise of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ). Unlike existing methods, our approach eliminates the need for quantum memory and is compatible with various quantum hardware technologies.The proposed method uses a custom quantum circuit as a QPUF, combined with a challenge-response-based protocol, to establish secure and efficient quantum device attestation. We evaluated our approach on IBM quantum hardware, analyzing key metrics such as instability, randomness, and uniqueness of the QPUFs. Experimental results validate the feasibility of the proposed method and demonstrate its practical advantages for real-world quantum service provision.
Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) offer a physically grounded approach to secure authentication, extending the capabilities of classical PUFs. This review covers their theoretical foundations and key implementation challenges—such as quantum memories and Haar‐randomness—, and distinguishes QPUFs from Quantum Readout PUFs (QR‐PUFs), more experimentally accessible yet less robust against quantum‐capable adversaries. A co‐citation‐based selection method is employed to trace the evolution of QPUF architectures, from early QR‐PUFs to more recent Hybrid PUFs (HPUFs). This method further supports a discussion on the role of information‐theoretic analysis in mitigating inconsistencies in QPUF responses, underscoring the deep connection between secret‐key generation and authentication. Despite notable advances, achieving practical and robust QPUF‐based authentication remains an open challenge.