Physical Unclonable Function Based on the Internal State Transitions of a Fibonacci Ring Oscillator

Area of Science:

• Hardware Security
• Cryptography Engineering
• Integrated Circuit Design

Background:

• Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are crucial for secure device identification and authentication.
• Existing PUF designs often require complex structures or significant resources.
• The need for efficient and reliable PUF solutions persists in hardware security.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a new class of PUFs based on the Fibonacci ring oscillator (FIRO).
• To demonstrate a method for reliable device identification using FIROs and a novel feature extraction algorithm.
• To enable efficient key recovery for low-complexity devices.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing the inherent repeatability and uniqueness of initial state transitions in FIROs.
• Employing a restart method to generate short boot sequences.
• Developing an innovative feature extraction algorithm for reliable identification.
• Implementing a device key recovery algorithm on an authorizing center.

Main Results:

• The FIRO-based PUF exhibits repeatability and uniqueness in its initial state transitions.
• A reliable device identification mechanism was achieved using short boot sequences and the feature extraction algorithm.
• The key recovery algorithm successfully reduced the resource requirements on authorized devices.
• Experimental validation on FPGAs from multiple manufacturers confirmed the methodology's effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• The proposed FIRO-based PUF offers a novel and efficient approach to hardware security.
• This method provides a practical solution for reliable device identification and key generation.
• The technique significantly alleviates resource constraints on low-complexity devices, enhancing security accessibility.