DRAM based Intrinsic Physical Unclonable Functions for System Level Security

Tehranipoor, Fatemeh; Karimian, Nima; Xiao, Kun; Chandy, John A.

doi:10.1145/2742060.2742069

Cited by 72 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…SRAM PUFs have been studied extensively and are based on the startup values that SRAM cells take on after powering on a device [11], [12]. DRAM-based PUFs have so far only leveraged DRAM cells' start-up values [13], [14], or DRAM cell-decay effects [6]. In contrast, this work presents the Rowhammer PUF, which is a new type of an intrinsic, DRAMbased PUF that uses the Rowhammer effect.…”

Section: Memory-based Intrinsic Pufsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intrinsic Rowhammer PUFs: Leveraging the Rowhammer effect for improved security

Schaller

Xiong

Saleem

et al. 2017

2017 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST)

123

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Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have become an important and promising hardware primitive for device fingerprinting, device identification, or key storage. Intrinsic PUFs leverage components already found in existing devices, unlike extrinsic silicon PUFs, which are based on customized circuits that involve modification of hardware. In this work, we present a new type of a memory-based intrinsic PUF, which leverages the Rowhammer effect in DRAM modules -the Rowhammer PUF. Our PUF makes use of bit flips, which occur in DRAM cells due to rapid and repeated access of DRAM rows. Prior research has mainly focused on Rowhammer attacks, where the Rowhammer effect is used to illegitimately alter data stored in memory, e.g., to change page table entries or enable privilege escalation attacks. Meanwhile, this is the first work to use the Rowhammer effect in a positive context -to design a novel PUF. We extensively evaluate the Rowhammer PUF using commercial, off-the-shelf devices, not relying on custom hardware or an FPGA-based setup. The evaluation shows that the Rowhammer PUF holds required properties needed for the envisioned security applications, and could be deployed today.

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Section: Memory-based Intrinsic Pufsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intrinsic Rowhammer PUFs: Leveraging the Rowhammer effect for improved security

Schaller

Xiong

Saleem

et al. 2017

2017 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST)

123

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…DRAM-based PUFs are a relatively new category of memory-based PUFs, as the first relevant publications appeared in 2012 [10][11][12][13]. In particular, there are multiple categories of DRAM-based PUFs, each of which takes advantage of a different physical characteristic of the DRAM [14], such as the startup values of the DRAM cells [15,16], their retention times [17,18] and their access latency regarding both the relevant write and read operations [19,20]. In this paper, we focus rather on DRAM PUFs based on the retention times of the DRAM cells, in the presence of the row hammer effect in them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intrinsic Run-Time Row Hammer PUFs: Leveraging the Row Hammer Effect for Run-Time Cryptography and Improved Security †

et al. 2018

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Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) based on the retention times of the cells of a Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) can be utilised for the implementation of cost-efficient and lightweight cryptographic protocols. However, as recent work has demonstrated, the times needed in order to generate their responses may prohibit their widespread usage. To address this issue, the Row Hammer PUF has been proposed by Schaller et al., which leverages the row hammer effect in DRAM modules to reduce the retention times of their cells and, therefore, significantly speed up the generation times for the responses of PUFs based on these retention times. In this work, we extend the work of Schaller et al. by presenting a run-time accessible implementation of this PUF and by further reducing the time required for the generation of its responses. Additionally, we also provide a more thorough investigation of the effects of temperature variations on the Row Hammer PUF and briefly discuss potential statistical relationships between the cells used to implement it. As our results prove, the Row Hammer PUF could potentially provide an adequate level of security for Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices, if its dependency on temperature is mitigated, and, may therefore, be commercially adopted in the near future.

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“…The MRAM PUF is easily constructible and evaluable and has small requirements to the area. The DRAM PUF [15,16] relies on the capacitor in the DRAM to initialize to random values at start-up time. The DRAM PUF provides a large number of input patterns (challenges) compared with other memory-based PUF circuits such as static RAM PUFs and can be used in low-cost identification applications.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Security Improvements in Next-Generation Passive Optical Networks Stage 2 †

et al. 2019

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Passive optical networks are currently the most promising solution for access networks. These networks rely on broadcast signal distribution in the downstream direction and unicast signal transmission in the upstream direction. The upstream direction is controlled by optical line termination (OLT). The broadcast transmission method increases security vulnerability because the attacker is able to connect his/her modified optical network unit (ONU) to the free port of the splitter (commonly in the basement). We present the concept for the activation process of ONUs based on physical unclonable function (PUF) for next-generation passive optical networks stage 2 (NG-PON2). The use of PUF increases security in the NG-PON2. Furthermore, the registration identifier (ID) is not stored in a nonvolatile memory, in comparison with the common solution defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) recommendation G.989.3. An attacker cannot perform a reverse engineering attack to obtain the registration ID. For this reason, the attacker cannot clone an ONU. We proposed security improvements that involve authentication, encryption, integrity protection, and data origin verification methods in the NG-PON2. Our model uses the standard implementation of the transmission convergence layer of NG-PON2 with the new physical layer operations, administration, and maintenance (PLOAM) messages. The recommendation G.989.3 allows specifying own PLOAM messages since not all IDs are used in the current specification.

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DRAM based Intrinsic Physical Unclonable Functions for System Level Security

Cited by 72 publications

References 14 publications

Intrinsic Rowhammer PUFs: Leveraging the Rowhammer effect for improved security

Intrinsic Rowhammer PUFs: Leveraging the Rowhammer effect for improved security

Intrinsic Run-Time Row Hammer PUFs: Leveraging the Row Hammer Effect for Run-Time Cryptography and Improved Security †

New Security Improvements in Next-Generation Passive Optical Networks Stage 2 †

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