Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have emerged as a powerful cryptographic tool for various applications due to their inherent physical uniqueness and unclonability. However, the advent of quantum computers has posed significant threats to classical PUFs. In response, Quantum PUFs (QPUFs), which exploit the principles of quantum mechanics, have been introduced as a robust alternative. This paper analyzes two key applications of QPUFs utilizing their distinctive output: secure storage and identification, from an information theoretic perspective. We establish achievability under different constraints and derive the secure storage capacity and a doubly exponential identification rate, even in the presence of an active adversary attempting to deceive the system by exploiting publicly stored data. We further demonstrate that within the quantum domain, we achieve higher rates compared to classical counterparts.
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have emerged as a powerful cryptographic tool for various applications due to their inherent physical uniqueness and unclonability. However, the advent of quantum computers has posed significant threats to classical PUFs. In response, Quantum PUFs (QPUFs), which exploit the principles of quantum mechanics, have been introduced as a robust alternative. This paper analyzes two key applications of QPUFs utilizing their distinctive output: secure storage and identification, from an information theoretic perspective. We establish achievability under different constraints and derive the secure storage capacity and a doubly exponential identification rate, even in the presence of an active adversary attempting to deceive the system by exploiting publicly stored data. We further demonstrate that within the quantum domain, we achieve higher rates compared to classical counterparts.
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have garnered significant attention for their potential in enhancing the security of IoT devices, offering an alternative to traditional computational-based approaches. Despite their potential, classical PUFs suffer from critical drawbacks, including vulnerability to machine learning attacks and inadequate defense against quantum adversaries. To address these limitations, alternative architectures utilizing quantum mechanical principles, known as Quantum PUFs (QPUFs), have been proposed. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the diverse range of QPUFs, detailing their architectures and security features. Additionally, it explores the information-theoretic applications of QPUFs in IoT, including secret key generation, secure storage, authentication, and identification. The findings indicate that classical results translate effectively to the quantum domain in most cases, with QPUFs exhibiting larger capacity regions compared to their classical counterparts.
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.
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 present an information-theoretic framework for secure storage and message identification utilizing fully quantum physically unclonable functions (QPUFs). Extending prior models rooted in classical and hybrid classical-quantum PUFs, we propose a fully quantum setting that enables robust identification protocols in the presence of a powerful quantum wiretapper holding correlated side information. We derive achievable second-order identification rates under stringent privacy leakage constraints and show that secure identification is feasible whenever a positive secret key rate can be extracted from the QPUF output—establishing a quantum analogue of the classical dichotomy theorem. Furthermore, we demonstrate that augmenting the system with an auxiliary public quantum source enhances identification capacity without increasing privacy leakage. Our results provide a rigorous theoretical foundation for quantum-secure identification and storage, with implications for next-generation communication systems and adversarial environments requiring low-latency, energy-efficient quantum-secure storage protocols.
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.
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.