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Cryptography

QPUF: Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions for Security-by-Design of Industrial Internet-of-Things

Venkata K. V. V. Bathalapalli, Saraju P. Mohanty, Chenyun Pan, Elias Kougianos

Published May 27, 2025• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This research investigates the integration of quantum hardware-assisted security into critical applications, including the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), Smart Grid, and Smart Transportation. The Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUF) architecture has emerged as a robust security paradigm, harnessing the inherent randomness of quantum hardware to generate unique and tamper-resistant cryptographic fingerprints. This work explores the potential of Quantum Computing for Security-by-Design (SbD) in the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), aiming to establish security as a fundamental and inherent feature. SbD in Quantum Computing focuses on ensuring the security and privacy of Quantum computing applications by leveraging the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, which underpin the quantum computing infrastructure. This research presents a scalable and sustainable security framework for the trusted attestation of smart industrial entities in Quantum Industrial Internet-of-Things (QIoT) applications within Industry 4.0. Central to this approach is the QPUF, which leverages quantum mechanical principles to generate unique, tamper-resistant fingerprints. The proposed QPUF circuit logic has been deployed on IBM quantum systems and simulators for validation. The experimental results demonstrate the enhanced randomness and an intra-hamming distance of approximately 50% on the IBM quantum hardware, along with improved reliability despite varying error rates, coherence, and decoherence times. Furthermore, the circuit achieved 100% reliability on Google’s Cirq simulator and 95% reliability on IBM’s quantum simulator, highlighting the QPUF’s potential in advancing quantum-centric security solutions.

DOI
10.3390/cryptography9020034

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This research investigates the integration of quantum hardware-assisted security into critical applications, including the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), Smart Grid, and Smart Transportation. The Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUF) architecture has emerged as a robust security paradigm, harnessing the inherent randomness of quantum hardware to generate unique and tamper-resistant cryptographic fingerprints. This work explores the potential of Quantum Computing for Security-by-Design (SbD) in the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), aiming to establish security as a fundamental and inherent feature. SbD in Quantum Computing focuses on ensuring the security and privacy of Quantum computing applications by leveraging the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, which underpin the quantum computing infrastructure. This research presents a scalable and sustainable security framework for the trusted attestation of smart industrial entities in Quantum Industrial Internet-of-Things (QIoT) applications within Industry 4.0. Central to this approach is the QPUF, which leverages quantum mechanical principles to generate unique, tamper-resistant fingerprints. The proposed QPUF circuit logic has been deployed on IBM quantum systems and simulators for validation. The experimental results demonstrate the enhanced randomness and an intra-hamming distance of approximately 50% on the IBM quantum hardware, along with improved reliability despite varying error rates, coherence, and decoherence times. Furthermore, the circuit achieved 100% reliability on Google’s Cirq simulator and 95% reliability on IBM’s quantum simulator, highlighting the QPUF’s potential in advancing quantum-centric security solutions.
Sustainable advancement is being made to improve the efficiency of the generation, transmission, and distribution of renewable energy resources, as well as managing them to ensure the reliable operation of the smart grid. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) enables sustainable management of grid communication flow through its real-time data sensing, processing, and actuation capabilities at various levels in the energy distribution framework. The security vulnerabilities associated with the SCADA-enabled grid infrastructure and management could jeopardize the smart grid operations. This work explores the potential of Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUF) for the security and reliability of the smart grid’s energy transmission and distribution framework. Quantum computing has emerged as a formidable security solution for high-performance computing applications through its probabilistic nature of information processing. This work has a quantum hardware-assisted security mechanism based on intrinsic properties of quantum hardware driven by quantum mechanics to provide tamper-proof security for quantum computing-driven smart grid infrastructure. This work introduces a novel QPUF architecture using quantum logic gates based on quantum decoherence, entanglement, and superposition. This generates a unique bitstream for each quantum device as a fingerprint. The proposed QPUF design is evaluated on IBM and Google quantum systems and simulators. The deployment on IBM quantum (ibmq_qasm_simulator) and Google Cirq simulators has achieved 100% reliability with an average Hamming distance of 50.07%, 51% randomness.
This work presents a Quantum Computing based Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) architecture with a novel approach for PUF key generation and noise reduction in noisy Quantum systems. The motivation is to explore the potential of Quantum Computing assisted cybersecurity for Security-by-Design (SbD) of Industrial-Internet-of-Things (IIoT). Internet-of-Things (IoT) in Industry 4.0 can improve efficiency, increase automation, and facilitate intelligent decision making through the integration of edge cloud computing paradigms. However, the lack of standardization of security protocols across IIoT devices can be challenging due to the heterogeneous nature of these devices. In this context, a novel Quantum circuits based PUF design that is built on real Quantum hardware is presented. The proposed QPUF can facilitate security in IIoT by using a Quantum hardware generated PUF key as the device identity. The proposed PUF Design is built using Quantum Hadamard Gate, and Ry gates and has been experimentally demonstrated on IBM Quantum hardware systems. The proposed architecture also supports PUF key generation from Quantum hardware for security applications. Figures-of-merits (FoM) of PUF have been evaluated and presented to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed Quantum PUF for SbD of IIoT.
Sustainable advancement is being made to improve the efficiency of the generation, transmission, and distribution of renewable energy resources, as well as managing them to ensure the reliable operation of the smart grid. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) enables sustainable management of grid communication flow through its real-time data sensing, processing, and actuation capabilities at various levels in the energy distribution framework. The security vulnerabilities associated with the SCADA-enabled grid infrastructure and management could jeopardize the smart grid operations. This work explores the potential of Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUF) for the security, privacy, and reliability of the smart grid's energy transmission and distribution framework. Quantum computing has emerged as a formidable security solution for high-performance computing applications through its probabilistic nature of information processing. This work has a quantum hardware-assisted security mechanism based on intrinsic properties of quantum hardware driven by quantum mechanics to provide tamper-proof security for quantum computing driven smart grid infrastructure. This work introduces a novel QPUF architecture using quantum logic gates based on quantum decoherence, entanglement, and superposition. This generates a unique bitstream for each quantum device as a fingerprint. The proposed QPUF design is evaluated on IBM and Google quantum systems and simulators. The deployment on the IBM quantum simulator (ibmq_qasm_simulator) has achieved an average Hamming distance of 50.07%, 51% randomness, and 86% of the keys showing 100% reliability.
The Smart Grid concept evolved from the idea of intelligent and secure management of electrical grid infrastructure components and their communication through sustainable integration with the state-of-the-art technologies. This research focuses on emerging quantum computing-assisted security and its application in the Smart Grid. The robustness of electrical grid is increasing every day through advancements in grid infrastructure management which include outage control, relay protection, reliable distribution, renewable energy resource integration, and energy trading. Quantum Computing emerges as a formidable solution for application in the smart grid due to its processing capability and scale. Its application and scope are evolving every day with the recent developments in Quantum Chips which could pave the way for emerging Quantum-Chain-of-Things (QCoT). This research focuses on providing robust security in smart grids through Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUF) primitive, a quantum-hardware assisted security approach driven by micro manufacturing quantum process variations for generating a quantum digital fingerprint driven by quantum mechanics principles. The QPUF experimental evaluation in this research was performed to uniquely fingerprint various electrical grid entities providing a sustainable and secure flow of communication. Experimental evaluation shows a robust and reliable extraction of quantum digital fingerprints from noisy IBM quantum systems. The evaluation shows an impressive 86% keys achieving 100% reliability.
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.