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

Anagnostopoulos, Nikolaos Athanasios; Arul, Tolga; Fan, Yufan; Hatzfeld, Christian; Schaller, André; Xiong, Wenjie; Jain, Manishkumar; Saleem, Muhammad Umair; Lotichius, Jan; Gabmeyer, Sebastian; Szefer, Jakub; Katzenbeisser, Stefan

doi:10.20944/preprints201804.0369.v1

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Rowhammer can be leveraged as a Physically-unclonable Function (PUF) [24,1], a security primitive that uses the physical variations specific to individual hardware components to generate unique and unpredictable cryptographic keys. For Rowhammer, the physical variation in DRAM cells can be used to generate a unique bit flip sequence that can be used as a basis for further cryptographic operations.…”

Section: Rowhammer As Physically-unclonable Function (Puf)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When we used a fixed 256 MB memory region and hammering pattern, in the most extreme case, we achieve on average 13 282 bit flips on 3 machines, but no bit flip on the 4th machine. This insight that even identical setups significantly impact bit flips directly affects proposals that rely on Rowhammer as a physical-unclonable function [24,1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Rowhammer Reproduction Study Using the Blacksmith Fuzzer

Gerlach,

Thomas,

Pietsch

et al. 2024

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Rowhammer is a hardware vulnerability that can be exploited to induce bit flips in dynamic random access memory (DRAM), compromising the security of a computer system. Multiple ways of exploiting Rowhammer have been shown and even in the presence of mitigations such as target row refresh (TRR), DRAM modules remain partially vulnerable. In this paper, we present a large-scale reproduction study on the Rowhammer vulnerability using the Blacksmith Rowhammer fuzzer. The main focus of our study is the impact of the fuzzing environment. Our study uses a diverse set of 10 DRAM chips from various manufacturers, with different capacities and memory frequencies. We show that the runtime, used seeds, and DRAM coverage of the fuzzer have been underestimated in previous work. Additionally, we study the entire hardware setup's impact on the transferability of Rowhammer by fuzzing the same DRAM on 4 identical machines. The transferability study heavily relates to Rowhammer-based physically unclonable functions (PUFs) which rely on the stability of Rowhammer-induced bit flips. Our results confirm the findings of the Blacksmith fuzzer, showing that even modern DRAM chips are vulnerable to Rowhammer. In addition, we show that PUFs are challenging to achieve on commodity systems due to the high variability of Rowhammer bit flips.

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Section: Rowhammer As Physically-unclonable Function (Puf)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rowhammer Reproduction Study Using the Blacksmith Fuzzer

Gerlach,

Thomas,

Pietsch

et al. 2024

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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“…The errors caused by the rowhammer disturbance are used to generate device signatures [18], [19]. This technique does not require any additional power cycle.…”

Section: ) Rowhammer Dpufsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, this type of PUF cannot be evaluated while the system is in operation. • Large Evaluation Time: Rowhammer-based and retention-based key generation techniques require an order of minutes to generate enough bit failures and therefore not suitable for many applications [13]- [15], [18], [19], [49]. On the other hand, the existing latencybased DPUF still needs multiple row cycles (reading one data burst at each cycle) to evaluate the PUF key [20] since the reduction in activation time only affects the first few bits in the cache line (see Section II-C).…”

Section: E Motivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…are the most common techniques to generate responses from memory chips [1]. Previous works on DRAM PUFs (DPUFs) have focused on: (i) retention-based: writing all cells to '1' and disabling the refresh then waiting for half the cells to discharge and reading cell values [2], [13]- [15], (ii) start-up based: using the start-up values of the cells to generate the secret key as in [16], [17], and (iii) disturbance-based: disturbance caused by rowhammer [18], [19]. The variations in activation latency time have also been used to generate device signatures [20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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PreLatPUF: Exploiting DRAM Latency Variations for Generating Robust Device Signatures

et al. 2019

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Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are potential security blocks to generate unique and more secure keys in low-cost cryptographic applications. Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) has been proposed as one of the promising candidates for generating robust keys. Unfortunately, the existing techniques of generating device signatures from DRAM is very slow, destructive (destroy the current data), and disruptive to system operation. In this paper, we propose precharge latency-based PUF (PreLatPUF) that exploits DRAM precharge latency variations to generate signatures. The proposed PreLatPUF is fast, robust, least disruptive, and non-destructive. The silicon results from commercially available DDR3 chips from different manufacturers show that the proposed key generation technique is at least ∼ 1, 192X faster than the existing approaches, while reliably reproducing the key in extreme operating conditions. INDEX TERMS DRAM-PUF, DRAM latency-based PUF, robust key generation.

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Overview of Modern Authentication Methods for Microcontrollers

Chura,

Nazar Chura

2024

Cybersecurity

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The paper is devoted to the study of modern authentication methods for microcontrollers, which play a crucial role in today's technological landscape. Microcontrollers serve as the foundation for most embedded devices used in various sectors, including consumer electronics, automotive systems, industrial equipment, and medical devices. They perform essential functions related to the control, monitoring, and management of numerous processes and systems. Given the widespread adoption of microcontrollers in critical infrastructures, ensuring their security has become a top priority. Authentication of microcontrollers is vital for preventing unauthorized access and cyberattacks, which could lead to serious consequences such as data breaches, system control, or failures in critical services. The paper examines the significance of microcontroller security in modern technologies and explores the potential risks arising from the use of unsecured microcontrollers. It also analyzes the state-of-the-art authentication methods used to protect microcontrollers. Special attention is given to comparing different approaches to authentication, which include both traditional and novel methods based on cryptography, physically unclonable functions (PUF), and biometrics. For each method, the paper outlines its advantages, disadvantages, and application areas, along with an assessment of their effectiveness in various security scenarios. Furthermore, the paper presents the results of practical implementation of some authentication methods in real-world examples, which demonstrate their viability and effectiveness in securing modern systems. The authors also suggest future research directions in this field, particularly the development of new authentication methods that combine high reliability with ease of implementation in the context of rapidly evolving technologies and cyber threats.

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

Cited by 4 publications

References 36 publications

A Rowhammer Reproduction Study Using the Blacksmith Fuzzer

A Rowhammer Reproduction Study Using the Blacksmith Fuzzer

PreLatPUF: Exploiting DRAM Latency Variations for Generating Robust Device Signatures

Overview of Modern Authentication Methods for Microcontrollers

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