Internet of Things (IoT) peripheral devices typically operate in resource-constrained environments and platform enclosures. This poses challenges when attempting to secure data traffic between operators and field devices. Due to the resource-intensive nature and/or stringent (e.g., connectivity) requirements of current encryption techniques, many prove infeasible to use within an IoT Edge network. In this work, we have developed a hardware-based attestation and authentication solution for IoT devices operating within constrained Edge environments where compute resource can be scarce, connectivity intermittent, environmental conditions uncontrolled, and accessibility limited. This is achieved through the use of an array of Resonant Tunneling Diodes (RTDs) that facilitate the generation of a ’strong’ Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) from a limited number of RTDs, reducing the device footprint and resource requirements. Comprehensive statistical analysis of the response of the array to external excitation has shown that the proposed RTD-based PUF can produce a suitably random, yet repeatable, and most importantly unclonable response to a given challenge. Thus, demonstrating the validity of the proposed solution for use within key generation or device authentication of assets within the IoT network.
Internet of Things (IoT) peripheral devices typically operate in resource-constrained environments and platform enclosures. This poses challenges when attempting to secure data traffic between operators and field devices. Due to the resource-intensive nature and/or stringent (e.g., connectivity) requirements of current encryption techniques, many prove infeasible to use within an IoT Edge network. In this work, we have developed a hardware-based attestation and authentication solution for IoT devices operating within constrained Edge environments where compute resource can be scarce, connectivity intermittent, environmental conditions uncontrolled, and accessibility limited. This is achieved through the use of an array of Resonant Tunneling Diodes (RTDs) that facilitate the generation of a ’strong’ Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) from a limited number of RTDs, reducing the device footprint and resource requirements. Comprehensive statistical analysis of the response of the array to external excitation has shown that the proposed RTD-based PUF can produce a suitably random, yet repeatable, and most importantly unclonable response to a given challenge. Thus, demonstrating the validity of the proposed solution for use within key generation or device authentication of assets within the IoT network.
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.
The rapid development of technology has provided a wealth of resources enabling the trust of everyday interactions to be undermined. Authentication schemes aim to address this challenge by providing proof of identity. This can be achieved by using devices that, when challenged, give unique but reproducible responses. At present, these distinct signatures are commonly generated by physically unclonable functions, or PUFs. These devices provide a straightforward measurement of a physical characteristic of their structure that has inherent randomness, due to imperfections in the manufacturing process. These hard-to-predict physical responses can generate a unique identity that can be used for authentication without relying on the secrecy of stored data. However, the classical design of these devices limits both their size and security. Here we show that the extensively studied problematic fluctuations in the current-voltage measurements of resonant tunnelling diodes (RTDs) provide an uncomplicated, robust measurement that can function as a PUF without conventional resource limitations. This is possible due to quantum tunnelling within the RTD, and on account of these room temperature quantum effects, we term such devices QUFs - quantum unclonable functions. As a result of the current-voltage spectra being dependent on the atomic structure and composition of the nanostructure within the RTD, each device provides a high degree of uniqueness, whilst being impossible to clone or simulate, even with state-of-the-art technology. We have thus created PUF-like devices requiring the fewest resources which make use of quantum phenomena in a highly manufacturable electronic device operating at room temperature. Conventional spectral analysis techniques, when applied to our QUFs, will enable reliable generation of unpredictable unique identities which can be employed in advanced authentication systems.
Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are physical components that translate an input challenge into a unique response that cannot be predicted without access to the component itself. PUFs can integrated into devices to ensure trust in everyday interactions and to act as a defence; guarding against the counterfeiting of goods by providing robust identities. In the past these functions have relied on classical phenomena, including signal speed through a ‘race’ wire (Arbiter PUFs [1]) or probabilistic switching of electronic latches. Many PUFs have been found to be vulnerable to response modelling [2] or direct cloning [3] attacks, and have limitations on minimum size. These vulnerabilities and constraints prompt turning away from classical PUF methodologies and towards architectures exploiting quantum phenomena, such as quantum confinement. We propose a PUF concept that operates on the principles on quantum confinement through the fluctuation of the first energy level of a resonant tunnelling diode (RTD) [4]. These fluctuations derive from intrinsic atomic scale variations in the manufacture of each RTD, and cause macroscopic changes in the specific electronic characteristics of the device [5]. In the simplest form, uniqueness in the RTDs would be derived from the current and voltage of the maximum tunnelling current position (see figure 1a) of each device. To be used as the constituent of a PUF, each resonant tunnel diode should be unique from one another, and stable after repeated readings. We compared the current and voltage of this peak current position of 26 RTDs that could constitute the PUF. It was found that the peaks of each RTD do not overlap to a certainty of 99.997% (see figure 1b). The stability of repeat measurements of a single device was also examined, finding a deviation upon repeat readings of two standard deviations (95%) compared to the average current and voltage values (figure 1c). This analysis suggests that the resonant tunnelling diode is a strong candidate for use in the next generation of more secure, quantum derived security hardware.
The unrelenting advancement of modern technology has inadvertently allowed the production of counterfeit components to become increasingly cheaper and easier, undermining the trust of everyday interactions and communications. An emerging solution to this problem is the use of physically unclonable functions1 (PUFs) - physical devices with random characteristics locked into their structure at the point of fabrication. The application of a stimulus to these constructions results in a hard-to-predict response due to the interaction with the complex microstructure of the device. This response is then used as a 'fingerprint' that can be used for a given application. Among others, these include low-cost device identification and authentication, secure key generation and the binding of software to hardware platforms. However, traditional PUFs have various setbacks: they suffer from not being truly unclonable, are susceptible to sophisticated attacks and bear a risk of emulation and simulation. Here we show that quantum physics lends itself to the provision of unique identities in the form of fluctuations in measurements of resonant tunnelling diodes (RTDs) containing various nanostructures. An example of which is a quantum dot, shown in Fig. 1. This provides an uncomplicated measure of identity, without conventional resource limitations or vulnerabilities. The quantum tunnelling spectrum also shown in Fig. 1 is sensitive to the atomic structure within the RTD, with each device providing extreme uniqueness that is presently impossible to clone or simulate. This new class of authentication device, coined the quantum unclonable function (QUF)2, operate with the fewest resources in simple electronic structures operating above 300 K.
Ensuring data security in Internet of Things (IoT) networks is a major challenge due to the limited computational resources and energy constraints of these devices. Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are hardware-based security tools that can provide unique identification for lightweight devices, making PUFs ideal for IoT applications. While PUFs have traditionally been used for authentication, in this paper, we propose a novel PUF protocol that can provide data integrity. Maintaining data integrity is crucial in many applications, including finance, healthcare, and energy. The proposed integrity based-PUF protocol is especially suitable for power constraint devices as it offers low computational overhead, execution time, and efficient communication overhead. In addition, we introduce a threat model called Physically Active Attack (PAA), a security requirement called Integrity Preserving (IP), to provide a comprehensive range of attacks and security goals specific to the context of our protocol. We then formally prove that our protocol preserves IP under PAA. We show that our proposed protocol is resistant to various attacks, including replay attacks, Man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM), cloning, brute force attacks, and physical attacks.
Device authentication and key exchange protocol are essential front line of access controls in IoT security, and physical unclonable function (PUF) is a key enabler to lightweight, low-power and secure authentication of internet enabled endpoint devices in IoT. Current PUF-enabled authentication protocol requires the verifier to store a sufficiently large number of challenge-response pairs (CRPs) of each of its interlocutors, which makes the protocol impractical in application scenarios where the verifier is a resource-constrained device, especially when the verifier needs to communicate with multiple PUF- embedded endpoints. To solve this problem, a new lightweight PUF-based mutual authentication and key-exchange protocol is proposed in this paper to allow two resource-constrained PUF embedded endpoint devices to authenticate each other without the need to store the CRPs locally, and simultaneously establish the session key for secure data exchange without resorting to public-key algorithm. The PUF response reliability is mitigated by the use of reverse fuzzy extractor to offload the compute- intensive error decoding to the server during the initialization phase of the protocol. The proposed protocol is evaluated using ProVerif to corroborate its secrecy, mutual authenticity as well as resistance against replay and man-in-the-middle attacks.