Extracting secret keys from integrated circuits

Modern cryptographic protocols are based on the premise that only authorized participants can obtain secret keys and access to information systems. However, various kinds of tampering methods have been devised to extract secret keys from conditional access systems such as smartcards and ATMs. Arbite...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on very large scale integration (VLSI) systems 2005-10, Vol.13 (10), p.1200-1205
Main Authors: Daihyun Lim, Lee, J.W., Gassend, B., Suh, G.E., van Dijk, M., Devadas, S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Construction
Cryptographic protocols
Data mining
Delay
Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing
Electric, optical and optoelectronic circuits
Electronic equipment and fabrication. Passive components, printed wiring boards, connectics
Electronics
Exact sciences and technology
Identification
Information systems
Integrated circuit reliability
Integrated circuits
Keys
Manufacturing processes
physical random function
Power system reliability
Power system security
process variation
Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices
Silicon
tamper resistance
Theoretical study. Circuits analysis and design
unclonability
Very large scale integration
Voltage
Wire
Wires
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Summary:Modern cryptographic protocols are based on the premise that only authorized participants can obtain secret keys and access to information systems. However, various kinds of tampering methods have been devised to extract secret keys from conditional access systems such as smartcards and ATMs. Arbiter-based physical unclonable functions (PUFs) exploit the statistical delay variation of wires and transistors across integrated circuits (ICs) in manufacturing processes to build unclonable secret keys. We fabricated arbiter-based PUFs in custom silicon and investigated the identification capability, reliability, and security of this scheme. Experimental results and theoretical studies show that a sufficient amount of inter-chip variation exists to enable each IC to be identified securely and reliably over a practical range of environmental variations such as temperature and power supply voltage. We show that arbiter-based PUFs are realizable and well suited to build, for example, key-cards that need to be resistant to physical attacks.
ISSN:1063-8210
1557-9999
DOI:10.1109/TVLSI.2005.859470