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Controlled physical random functions and applications

Published: 22 January 2008 Publication History

Abstract

The cryptographic protocols that we use in everyday life rely on the secure storage of keys in consumer devices. Protecting these keys from invasive attackers, who open a device to steal its key, is a challenging problem. We propose controlled physical random functions (CPUFs) as an alternative to storing keys and describe the core protocols that are needed to use CPUFs. A physical random functions (PUF) is a physical system with an input and output. The functional relationship between input and output looks like that of a random function. The particular relationship is unique to a specific instance of a PUF, hence, one needs access to a particular PUF instance to evaluate the function it embodies. The cryptographic applications of a PUF are quite limited unless the PUF is combined with an algorithm that limits the ways in which the PUF can be evaluated; this is a CPUF. A major difficulty in using CPUFs is that you can only know a small set of outputs of the PUF—the unknown outputs being unrelated to the known ones. We present protocols that get around this difficulty and allow a chain of trust to be established between the CPUF manufacturer and a party that wishes to interact securely with the PUF device. We also present some elementary applications, such as certified execution.

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      cover image ACM Transactions on Information and System Security
      ACM Transactions on Information and System Security  Volume 10, Issue 4
      January 2008
      192 pages
      ISSN:1094-9224
      EISSN:1557-7406
      DOI:10.1145/1284680
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Publication History

      Published: 22 January 2008
      Accepted: 01 April 2007
      Revised: 01 March 2007
      Received: 01 October 2005
      Published in TISSEC Volume 10, Issue 4

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      Author Tags

      1. Certified execution
      2. physical random function
      3. physical security
      4. physical unclonable function
      5. trusted computing

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