• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.59-63
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• 2018

Among Internet of things (IoT) applications, the most demanding requirements for the widespread realization of many IoT visions are security and low power. In terms of security, IoT applications include tasks that are rarely addressed before such as secure computation, trusted sensing, and communication, privacy, and so on. These tasks ask for new and better techniques for the protection of data, software, and hardware. An integral part of hardware cryptographic primitives are secret keys and unique IDs. Physical Unclonable Functions(PUF) are a unique class of circuits that leverage the inherent variations in manufacturing process to create unique, unclonable IDs and secret keys. In this paper, we propose a low power Arbiter PUF circuit with low error rate and high reliability compared with conventional arbiter PUFs. The proposed PUF utilizes a power gating structure to save the power consumption in sleep mode, and uses a razor flip-flop to increase reliability. PUF has been designed and implemented using a FPGA and a ASIC chip (a 0.35 um technology). Experimental results show that our proposed PUF solves the metastability problem and reduce the power consumption of PUF compared to the conventional Arbiter PUF. It is expected that the proposed PUF can be used in systems required low power consumption and high reliability such as low power encryption processors and low power biomedical systems.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.527-532
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• 2024

Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) provide a high level of security for private keys using unique physical characteristics of hardware. However, fabricating PUF chips requires numerous semiconductor processes, leading to high costs, which limits their applications. In this work, we introduce a low-cost manufacturing method for PUF security chips. First, surface roughening through wet-etching is utilized to create random variables. Additionally, physical vapor deposition is added to further enhance randomness. After PUF chip fabrication, both Hamming distance (HD) and Hamming weight (HW) are extracted and compared to verify the fabricated chip. It is confirmed that the PUF chip using two different multiple process variables demonstrates superior uniqueness and uniformity compared to the PUF security chip fabricated using only a single process variable.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.29-43
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• 2019

In recent years, as the network traffic in the WSN(Wireless Sensor Network) has been increased by the growing number of IoT wireless devices, SDWSN(Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Network) and its security that aims a secure SDN(Software-Defined Networking) for efficiently managing network resources in WSN have received much attention. In this paper, we study on how to efficiently and securely design a PUF(Physical Unclonable Function)-assisted group key distribution scheme for the SDWSN environment. Recently, Huang et al. have designed a group key distribution scheme using the strengths of SDN and the physical security features of PUF. However, we observe that Huang et al.'s scheme has weak points that it does not only lack of authentication for the auxiliary controller but also it maintains the redundant synchronization information. In this paper, we securely design an authentication process of the auxiliary controller and improve the vulnerabilities of Huang et al.'s scheme by adding counter strings and random information but deleting the redundant synchronization information.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.23-40
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• 2024

Hardware attacks involve physical reverse engineering efforts to steal sensitive information, such as encryption keys and circuit designs. Encryption and obfuscation are representative countermeasures, but they are nullified if adversaries manage to find the key. To address this issue, we propose e-Cryptex, which utilizes a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) as an anti-tampering shield. PUF acts as a random number generator and relies on unique physical variants that cannot be replicated or restored to enhance anti-tampering mechanisms. e-Cryptex uses PUF as a shield to protect the system's structure and generate the key. Tampering with the shield will result in the destruction of the key. This paper demonstrates that e-Cryptex meets PUF security requirements and is effective in detecting of tampering attempts that pierce or completely destroy the shield. Each board consistently generates the same key under normal conditions, while also showing key uniqueness across different boards.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.8
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• pp.1037-1043
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• 2020

This paper presents a new Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) security chip based on a low-cost, small-area, and low-power semiconductor process for IoT devices. The proposed security circuit has multiple challenge-to-response pairs (CRP) by adding the switching circuit to the cross-coupled path between two inverters of the SRAM structure and applying the challenge input. As a result, the proposed structure has multiple CRPs while maintaining the advantages of fast operating speed and small area per bit of the conventional SRAM based PUF security chip. In order to verify the performance, the proposed switched SRAM based PUF security chip with a core area of 0.095㎟ was implemented in a 180nm CMOS process. The measurement results of the implemented PUF show 4096-bit number of CRPs, intra-chip Hamming Distance (HD) of 0, and inter-chip HD of 0.4052.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.3-10
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• 2019

The 5G network is a next-generation converged network that combines various ICT technologies to realize the need for high speed, hyper connection and ultra low delay, and various efforts have been made to address the security vulnerabilities of the previous generation mobile networks. However, the standards released so far still have potential security vulnerabilities, such as USIM deception and replication attack, message re-transmission attack, and race-condition attack. In order to solve these security problems, this paper proposes a new 5G-AKA protocol with PUF technology, which is a physical unclonable function. The proposed PUF-based 5G-AKA improves the security vulnerabilities identified so far using the device-specific response for a specific challenge and hash function. This approach enables a strong white-list policy through the addition of inexpensive PUF circuits when utilizing 5G networks in areas where security is critical. In addition, since additional cryptographic algorithms are not applied to existing protocols, there is relatively little burden on increasing computational costs or increasing authentication parameter storage.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.75-82
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• 2013

This paper presents a PUF circuit based on the randomness of crosstalk magnitudes in adjacent transmission lines. Conventional PUF circuitry suffers the reliability problem where a consistent output value is not guaranteed due to environmental changes, such as power supply voltage and operating temperature. The proposed circuit consists of three transmission lines. The crosstalk difference between two transmission line pairs can be arbitrary. The proposed circuit compares the crosstalk differences between two transmission line pairs, and yields consistent responses. The crosstalk differences are immune to operating environment changes. The proposed PUF circuit provides with reliable responses for given challenges. It can be utilized by security systems such as authentication and encryption.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.346-357
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• 2023

Hardware security primitives, also known as physical unclonable functions (PUFs), perform innovative roles to extract the randomness unique to specific hardware. This paper proposes a novel hardware security primitive using a commercial off-the-shelf flash memory chip that is an intrinsic part of most commercial Internet of Things (IoT) devices. First, we define a hardware security source model to describe a hardware-based fixed random bit generator for use in security applications, such as cryptographic key generation. Then, we propose a hardware security primitive with flash memory by exploiting the variability of tunneling electrons in the floating gate. In accordance with the requirements for robustness against the environment, timing variations, and random errors, we developed an adaptive extraction algorithm for the flash PUF. Experimental results show that the proposed flash PUF successfully generates a fixed random response, where the uniqueness is 49.1%, steadiness is 3.8%, uniformity is 50.2%, and min-entropy per bit is 0.87. Thus, our approach can be applied to security applications with reliability and satisfy high-entropy requirements, such as cryptographic key generation for IoT devices.

• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.15 no.3_1
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• pp.99-105
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• 2015

A typical SRAM-based PUF is used in random number generation and key exchange process. The generated out puts should be preserved, but the values are changed owing to the external environment. This paper presents a new D-PUF logic employing a dual anti-fuse OTP memory to the SRAM-based PUF. The proposed PUF can enhance the reliability of the logic since it can preserve the output values. First, we construct the OTP memory using an anti-fuse. After power up, a SRAM generates the random values owing to the mismatch of cross coupled inverter pair. The generated random values are programed in the proposed anti-fuse ROM. The values that were programed in the ROM at once will not be changed and returned. Thus, the outputs of the proposed D-PUF are not affected by the environment variable such as the operation voltage and temperature variation, etc. Consequently, the reliability of the proposed PUF will be enhanced owing to the proposed dual anti-fuse ROM. Therefore, the proposed D-PUF can be stably operated, in particular, without the powerful ECC in the external environment that are changed.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.38B no.12
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• pp.944-953
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• 2013

Recently, a storage media is becoming smaller and storage capacity is also becoming larger than before. However, important data was leaked through a small storage media. To solve these serious problem, many security companies manufacture secure USBs with secure function, such as data encryption, user authentication, not copying data, and management system for secure USB, etc. But various attacks, such as extracting flash memory from USBs, password hacking or memory dump, and bypassing fingerprint authentication, have appeared. Therefore, security techniques related to secure USBs have to concern many threats for them. The basic components for a secure USB are secure authentication and data encryption techniques. Though existing secure USBs applied password based user authentication, it is necessary to develop more secure authentication because many threats have appeared. And encryption chipsets are used for data encryption however we also concern key managements. Therefore, this paper suggests mutual device authentication based on PUF (Physical Unclonable Function) between USBs and the authentication server and key management without storing the secret key. Moreover, secure USB is systematically managed with metadata and authentication information stored in authentication server.