Bit string analysis of Physical Unclonable Functions based on resistance variations in metals and transistors

Ju, Jing; Plusquellic, Jim; Chakraborty, Raj; Rad, Reza M.

doi:10.1109/hst.2012.6224312

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In [15], we show a 'bowl-shaped' pattern exists in the M1 voltages across the 2-D array of SMCs and indicated that computing inter-metal layer voltage differences (as we do here) effectively eliminates it. The basic problem with using the VDC to compute the analog difference directly deals with the different sensitivities that exist for Cal0 and Cal1.…”

Section: Vdc Experimental Resultssupporting

confidence: 58%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Stability analysis of a physical unclonable function based on metal resistance variations

Chakraborty

Lamech

et al. 2013

2013 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Keying material for encryption is stored as digital bitstrings in non-volatile memory on FPGAs and ASICs in current technologies. However, secrets stored this way are not secure against a determined adversary, who can use probing attacks to steal the secret. Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) have emerged as an alternative. PUFs leverage random manufacturing variations as the source of entropy for generating random bitstrings, and incorporate an on-chip infrastructure for measuring and digitizing the corresponding variations in key electrical parameters, such as delay or voltage. PUFs are designed to reproduce a bitstring on demand and therefore eliminate the need for on-chip storage. In this paper, we evaluate the randomness, uniqueness and stability characteristics of a PUF based on metal wire resistance variations in a set of 63 chips fabricated in a 90 nm technology. The stability of the PUF and an on-chip voltageto-digital converter are evaluated at 9 temperature-voltage corners. Keywords -Physical Unclonable Function, power grid, metal resistance variationsming distance (HD) is used to determine the uniqueness of the bistrings among the population of chips. Similarly, the NIST statistical test suite can be used to evaluate the randomness of the bistrings produced by each chip [1]. And intra-chip HD can be used to evaluate stability of the bitstrings, i.e., the ability of each chip to reproduce the same bitstring time-after-time, under varying temperature and voltage conditions.In this paper, we focus on determining the temperature and voltage (TV) stability of a PUF that is based on resistance variations which occur in the metal wires of the chip's power grid. A significant benefit of using metal structures is that "noise-related" variations, such as those introduced by TV variations, result in linear changes to the measured voltages. This linear scaling characteristic allows the relative magnitude of two voltages to remain consistent across changes in temperature and voltage, which, in turn, improves the stability of the PUF to bit-flips 1 , when compared, for example to PUFs which leverage transistor-based variations.In our experiments, we evaluate the power grid (PG) PUF at 9 TV corners, i.e., over all combinations of 3 temperatures; -40 o C, 25 o C and 85 o C, and 3 voltages; nominal and +/-10% of nominal. The evaluation is carried out on a set of chips fabricated in IBM's 90 nm, 9 metal layer bulk silicon process. The stability of the bitstrings is measured using intra-chip HD and 'probability of failure' techniques. Randomness and uniqueness are also evaluated using the NIST test suite and inter-chip HD methods. A bit-flip avoidance scheme is proposed and evaluated that reduces the probability of a failure to reproduce the bitstring to less than 1E-9. We also investigate an on-chip voltage-to-digital converter (VDC) for measuring voltage variations (which reflect resistance variations in the metal wires) and its stability across the 9 TV corners.

show abstract

Section: Vdc Experimental Resultssupporting

confidence: 58%

“…SRAMs [11][12], in leakage current [13], in metal resistance [14][15], in optics and phase change [16], in sensors [17], in switching variations [18], in sub-threshold design [19], in…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability analysis of a physical unclonable function based on metal resistance variations

Chakraborty

Lamech

et al. 2013

2013 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…After calibration, S 21 measurements were taken from each board and post-processed to extract a set of response characteristics including center rejection frequency, maximum insertion loss (lowest -dB), fractional bandwidth (FBW), and points of maximum roll-off (slope of curve). The values of these parameters were then combined with the frequency and insertion loss after applying a modulus technique similar to that in References [10,39]. We use a modulus operation to ensure an unbiased response bitstring, defined here as a 15-bit ID for each NotchPUF PCB, as we explain further below.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each architecture defines a source of entropy, that is, device-level features that vary randomly because of non-zero manufacturing tolerances. For example, Reference [2] leverages random variations in transistor threshold voltages, Reference [3] uses variations in speckle patterns, References [4][5][6][7] measure variations in delay chains and ring oscillators (ROs), Reference [8] reads out random power-up patterns in SRAMs, while References [9,10] leverage variations in metal resistance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

NotchPUF: Printed Circuit Board PUF Based on Microstrip Notch Filter

Martin

Plusquellic

2020

Cryptography

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are primitives that are designed to leverage naturally occurring variations to produce a random bitstring. Current PUF designs are typically implemented in silicon or utilize variations found in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. Because of this, existing designs are insufficient for the authentication of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). In this paper, we propose a novel PUF design that leverages board variations in a manufactured PCB to generate unique and stable IDs for each PCB. In particular, a single copper trace is used as a source of randomness for bitstring generation. The trace connects three notch filter structures in series, each of which is designed to reject specific but separate frequencies. The bitstrings generated using data measured from a set of PCBs are analyzed using statistical tests to illustrate that high levels of uniqueness and randomness are achievable.

show abstract

“…It should be noted that other PUF designs which are effectively based on measuring differences in resistance values have been proposed. Those designs are based on materials such as magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) [42], memristors [43,44], and on-chip transistors [45] and metal wires [45,46]. These designs share a common theme with our proposed thermistor PUF of using unique resistances to produce a response.…”

Section: Comparison To Existing Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of Thermistor Temperature Sensors for Cyber-Physical System Security

Labrado

Thapliyal

Prowell

et al. 2019

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The last few decades have seen a large proliferation in the prevalence of cyber-physical systems. This has been especially highlighted by the explosive growth in the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Unfortunately, the increasing prevalence of these devices has begun to draw the attention of malicious entities which exploit them for their own gain. What makes these devices especially attractive is the various resource constraints present in these devices that make it difficult to add standard security features. Therefore, one intriguing research direction is creating security solutions out of already present components such as sensors. Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are one potential solution that use intrinsic variations of the device manufacturing process for provisioning security. In this work, we propose a novel weak PUF design using thermistor temperature sensors. Our design uses the differences in resistance variation between thermistors in response to temperature change. To generate a PUF that is reliable across a range of temperatures, we use a response-generation algorithm that helps mitigate the effects of temperature variation on the thermistors. We tested the performance of our proposed design across a range of environmental operating conditions. From this we were able to evaluate the reliability of the proposed PUF with respect to variations in temperature and humidity. We also evaluated the PUF’s uniqueness using Monte Carlo simulations.

show abstract

Bit string analysis of Physical Unclonable Functions based on resistance variations in metals and transistors

Cited by 7 publications

References 24 publications

Stability analysis of a physical unclonable function based on metal resistance variations

Stability analysis of a physical unclonable function based on metal resistance variations

NotchPUF: Printed Circuit Board PUF Based on Microstrip Notch Filter

Use of Thermistor Temperature Sensors for Cyber-Physical System Security

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About