Biological physically unclonable function

Abstract

Information security is one of the foundational requirements for any modern society thriving on digital connectivity. At present, information security is accomplished either through software algorithms or hardware protocols. Software algorithms use pseudo random numbers generated by one-way mathematical functions that are computationally robust in the classical era, but are shown to become vulnerable in the post-quantum era. Hardware security overcomes such limitations through physically unclonable functions (PUFs) that exploit manufacturing process variations in the physical microstructures of Si integrated circuits to obtain true random numbers. However, recent upsurge in reverse engineering strategies make Si-PUFs vulnerable to various attacks. Moreover, Si-PUFs are low-entropy, power-hungry, and area-inefficient. Here we introduce a biological PUF which exploits the inherent randomness found in the colonized populations of T cells and is difficult to reverse engineer and at the same time is high-entropy, non-volatile, reconfigurable, ultra-low-power, low-cost, and environment friendly.

EPPAS: Energy‐efficient privacy‐preserving and physically secure mutual authentication scheme for secure communication in smart grid systems

“…Data aggregation with privacy preservation methods was introduced in Gope et al 21 based on the homomorphic encryption to decrease the communication cost and to provide the confidentiality of SM i readings in SGs . Wali et al 22 used the Paillier encryption method to aggregate the multidimensional data. The Boneh, Goh, and Nissim ( BGN ) cryptosystem and blinding factors were used to develop data aggregation with a privacy‐preserving scheme to resist the inside attackers from the learning of customer behavior patterns 23 .…”

Raman Ink for Steganography

“…A massive volume of political, military, commercial, and personal information is generated and transmitted every day, but it is susceptible to loss, interception, and manipulation. [ 1 ] Therefore, it is rather important to establish a powerful and robust security system to combat against information leakage. Encryption is a commonly used approach for data security, which encrypts messages into directly unreadable data.…”

Hybrid low-voltage physical unclonable function based on inkjet-printed metal-oxide transistors

“…Recently, PUFs based on novel materials, such as quantum dots (Liu et al 34 ), biological human T cells (Wali et al 25 ) were presented, mostly utilizing optical inspections for key generation. Other works on promising novel materials and methods concentrate on fingerprint-alike intrinsic counterfeit protection using random surface patterns 25 , 34 – 41 . These approaches need high-cost equipment such as microscopes, image processing, and optical readout for reliable key generation.…”

“…Si-PUFs can be further classified as bi-stable [19][20][21] , delay-based 22 , or analog PUFs 23,24 , depending on the underlying variation source, such as dopants, defects, and geometrical device dimensions. Furthermore, Si-PUFs often suffer from reduced entropy 25 , compared with additive manufacturing techniques. Also, IC fabrication is limited to a few foundries worldwide.…”

“…PE can help to tackle e-waste by efficient use of non-toxic, and bio-degradable materials to empower a sustainable future regarding "green electronics" 32,33 . Recently, PUFs based on novel materials, such as quantum dots (Liu et al 34 ), biological human T cells (Wali et al 25 ) were presented, mostly utilizing optical inspections for key generation. Other works on promising novel materials and methods concentrate on fingerprint-alike intrinsic counterfeit protection using random surface patterns 25,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] .…”