Lightweight security solutions for IoT implementations in space

Anagnostopoulos, Nikolaos Athanasios; Fan, Yufan; Arul, Tolga; Sarangdhar, Ravi; Katzenbeisser, Stefan

doi:10.1109/twios.2019.8771257

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The ability of DRAM-based PUFs to provide responses of high quality that can be utilised to provide an acceptable level of security has been examined in a number of relevant works In particular, we note that, under nominal conditions, our run-time implementation of the DRAM decay-based PUF on the PandaBoard ES Rev B3 can provide, within 60 second (s), more than 20 KB of cells whose values have "flipped" in a memory region of 32 MB, while our run-time implementation of the DRAM decay-based PUF on the Intel Galileo Gen 2 board can provide more than 1.7 KB of cells whose values have "flipped" within the same time in a memory region of the same size [86]. In general, we observe that, within 300s (i.e., 5 minutes), ≈2% of the memory cells being utilised as a run-time DRAM decay-based PUF have "flipped", when a PandaBoard ES Rev B3 is used for the implementation of this PUF [86,153], and 0.5% to 1% of the memory cells being utilised as a run-time DRAM decay-based PUF, when an Intel Galileo Gen 2 board is used [83,86,147,153]. Therefore, as the relevant works prove, DRAM decay-based PUF can provide an acceptable level of security under nominal conditions, as the number of bit "flips" observed is rather adequate even if the DRAM refresh operation is suspended for a rather short period of time.…”

Section: Dram-based Pufs Under Nominal Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…We have utilised these devices to test the effects of very low temperatures on SRAM PUFs, by investigating the relevant data remanence phenomena that can lead to successful attacks against these PUFs [3,4]. Regarding the ST Microelectronics STM32F407 Discovery (STM32F407G-DISC1) and the ST Microelectronics STM32 Nucleo-64 NUCLEO-L152RE boards, which are shown in Figure 3.3, we have implemented SRAM PUFs utilising their intrinsic SRAMs, in order to test the resilience of such PUF to radiation [147]. By testing the resilience of SRAM PUFs to low temperatures and to radiation, we were able to assess whether they can be utilised in IoT applications that potentially involve adverse operating 19 https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/+/2be7d22f062535de59babdb4b5e9de9ff31e817e conditions, e.g., in space missions and other relevant applications.…”

Section: The Static Random Access Memory (Sram) Pufmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, DRAM PUFs can be easily implemented on almost any modern computer system, as DRAM is very often an inherent component of modern computer systems, serving as the system's RAM, As the DRAM decay-based PUF responses are highly dependent on both the ambient temperature and the decay time duration, the characteristics of these PUFs, in relation to both of these factors, have been examined in detail in previous works [83,86,87,147,153], in order to test whether such responses can truly provide reliable security. In order to validate that these PUFs can provide adequate security in the context of the security protocols and applications proposed and discussed in Section 5, we will examine in more detail the effects of adverse environmental conditions, including ambient temperature variations, in Section 4.…”

Section: The Dram Startup-based Pufmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of works have already assessed the quality of the responses of memory-based PUFs under ambient temperature variations. In particular, SRAM PUFs [3,4,113,145,185,186,192], all types of DRAM-based PUFs [79,80,82,83,85,86,87,88,143,144,147,153,158,192], as well as Flash-memory-based PUFs [89,147,161,162,191,193], have been shown to be mildly or even heavily affected by variations of the relevant ambient temperature. Therefore, we can conclude that most, if not all, memory-based PUFs are somewhat dependent on the ambient temperature and are affected by changes of its value.…”

Section: Memory-based Pufs Under Ambient Temperature Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of works have demonstrated that some DRAM-based PUFs can be significantly affected by temperature variations. In particular, it has been shown that DRAM startup-based PUFs, DRAM decaybased PUFs, and DRAM Row Hammer PUFs are highly affected by ambient temperature variations [48,79,82,83,85,86,87,143,147,153,158,192], while the effects of ambient temperature variations on DRAM latency-based PUFs are rather limited [80,88,144]. In this work, we will examine in detail the dependency of DRAM decay-based PUFs that have been implemented on Intel Galileo Gen 2 boards, and of DRAM Row Hammer PUFs that have been implemented on PandaBoard ES Rev B3 devices, on ambient temperature variations.…”

Section: Dram-based Pufs Under Ambient Temperature Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Practical Lightweight Security: Physical Unclonable Functions and the Internet of Things

Anagnostopoulos¹

2022

Preprint

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In this work, we examine whether Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) can act as lightweight security mechanisms for practical applications in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT). In order to do so, we first discuss what PUFs are, and note that memory-based PUFs seem to fit the best to the framework of the IoT. Then, we consider a number of relevant memory-based PUF designs and their properties, and evaluate their ability to provide security in nominal and adverse conditions. Finally, we present and assess a number of practical PUF-based security protocols for IoT devices and networks, in order to confirm that memory-based PUFs can indeed constitute adequate security mechanisms for the IoT, in a practical and lightweight fashion.More specifically, we first consider what may constitute a PUF, and we redefine PUFs as inanimate physical objects whose characteristics can be exploited in order to obtain a behaviour similar to a highly distinguishable (i.e., “(quite) unique”) mathematical function. We note that PUFs share many characteristics with biometrics, with the main difference being that PUFs are based on the characteristics of inanimate objects, while biometrics are based on the characteristics of humans and other living creatures. We also note that it cannot really be proven that PUFs are unique per instance, but they should be considered to be so, insofar as (human) biometrics are also considered to be unique per instance.We, then, proceed to discuss the role of PUFs as security mechanisms for the IoT, and we determine that memory-based PUFs are particularly suited for this function. We observe that the IoT nowadays consists of heterogeneous devices connected over diverse networks, which include both high-end and resource-constrained devices. Therefore, it is essential that a security solution for the IoT is not only effective, but also highly scalable, flexible, lightweight, and cost-efficient, in order to be considered as practical. To this end, we note that PUFs have been proposed as security mechanisms for the IoT in the related work, but the practicality of the relevant security mechanisms has not been sufficiently studied.We, therefore, examine a number of memory-based PUFs that are implemented using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, and assess their potential to serve as acceptable security mechanisms in the context of the IoT, not only in terms of effectiveness and cost, but also under both nominal and adverse conditions, such as ambient temperature and supply voltage variations, as well as in the presence of (ionising) radiation. In this way, we can determine whether memory-based PUFs are truly suitable to be used in the various application areas of the IoT, which may even involve particularly adverse environments, e.g., in IoT applications involving space modules and operations.Finally, we also explore the potential of memory-based PUFs to serve as adequate security mechanisms for the IoT in practice, by presenting and analysing a number of cryptographic protocols based on these PUFs. In particular, we study how memory-based PUFs can be used for key generation, as well as device identification, and authentication, their role as security mechanisms for current and next-generation IoT devices and networks, and their potential for applications in the space segment of the IoT and in other adverse environments. Additionally, this work also discusses how memory-based PUFs can be utilised for the implementation of lightweight reconfigurable PUFs that allow for advanced security applications. In this way, we are able to confirm that memory-based PUFs can indeed provide flexible, scalable, and efficient security solutions for the IoT, in a practical, lightweight, and inexpensive manner.

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