Memory-Based Combination PUFs for Device Authentication in Embedded Systems

摘要

Embedded systems play a crucial role in fueling the growth of theInternet-of-Things (IoT) in application domains such as healthcare, homeautomation, transportation, etc. However, their increasingly network-connectednature, coupled with their ability to access potentially sensitive/confidentialinformation, has given rise to many security and privacy concerns. Anadditional challenge is the growing number of counterfeit components in thesedevices, resulting in serious reliability and financial implications.Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are a promising security primitive tohelp address these concerns. Memory-based PUFs are particularly attractive asthey require minimal or no additional hardware for their operation. However,current memory-based PUFs utilize only a single memory technology forconstructing the PUF, which has several disadvantages including making themvulnerable to security attacks. In this paper, we propose the design of a newmemory-based combination PUF that intelligently combines two memorytechnologies, SRAM and DRAM, to overcome these shortcomings. The proposedcombination PUF exhibits high entropy, supports a large number ofchallenge-response pairs, and is intrinsically reconfigurable. We haveimplemented the proposed combination PUF using a Terasic TR4-230 FPGA board andseveral off-the-shelf SRAMs and DRAMs. Experimental results demonstratesubstantial improvements over current memory-based PUFs including the abilityto resist various attacks. Extensive authentication tests across a widetemperature range (20 - 60 deg. Celsius) and accelerated aging (12 months)demonstrate the robustness of the proposed design, which achieves a 100%true-positive rate and 0% false-positive rate for authentication across theseparameter ranges.