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The communication of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices faces important security and privacy challenges. With the rapid increase in the number of devices, it is difficult for traditional security mechanisms to balance performance and security. Although schemes based on encryption and authentication exist, there are still difficulties in achieving lightweight security. In this paper, an authentication and key exchange scheme combining hardware security features and modern encryption technology is proposed for the MQTT-SN protocol, which is not considered security. The scheme uses Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to generate unpredictable responses, and combines random numbers, time stamps, and shared keys to achieve two-way authentication and secure communication between devices and broker, effectively preventing network threats such as replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. Through verification, the proposed scheme has proved effective in terms of security and robustness, has computational and communication cost advantages compared with recent schemes, and provides higher availability.

Due to the limited payload and power of drones, the computational overhead, storage overhead and communication overhead that can be used for secure communication are restricted, making it difficult to apply some complex but fairly secure authentication protocols on drones. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity protocol for storing identity information in a resource-unconstrained device that does not require the UAV to store the information, thereby enhancing the UAV’s resistance to capture. The protocol in this paper mainly consists of quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes, physical unclonable functions (PUFs) based on random-access memory (RAM), “XOR” operations, and hash computation. The protocol in this paper is an authentication architecture in which the drone is guided by the ground station to read its identity information, and the drone does not store any identity information in advance. The protocol is divided into two phases: 1. fuzzy authentication of fingerprint PUF and 2. uniqueness authentication accomplished while guiding the recovery of identity PUF. Recovering identity PUF in this paper, QC-LDPC is used as the error control module, and the optimization of bit-flip decoding significantly reduces the probability of decoding failure. After the comparative security analysis and comparative overhead analysis of this paper’s protocol, it can be concluded that this paper’s protocol can withstand common attacks (including attacks attempting to pass authentication, attacks attempting to interfere with authentication, and physical capture attacks), and the storage and communication overhead is small in the case of large time overhead.

A secure and effective authentication and communication scheme between users and underwater sensors plays an important role in improving the detection and utilization of marine resources in underwater acoustic networks (UANs). However, due to the energy limitations and susceptibility to capture of underwater sensors and gateways, it is necessary to design a lightweight authentication protocol that can resist capture of sensors and gateways during attacks. In this paper, a lightweight authentication protocol for UANs based on the Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) and chaotic map is proposed. We used the advantages of PUF to resist sensors and gateways being captured in attacks and the chaotic map to achieve lightweight authentication because the computational cost of the chaotic map is almost one-third that of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Additionally, we used the formal security proof in the random oracle model to prove the security of the proposed scheme. Our scheme was more secure and efficient compared with some other related schemes in terms of security and performance requirements, and the proposed scheme is suitable for UANs.

Internet of Things (IoT) technology is evolving over the peak of smart infrastructure with the participation of IoT devices in a wide range of applications. Traditional IoT authentication methods are vulnerable to threats due to wireless data transmission. However, IoT devices are resource- and energy-constrained, so building lightweight security that provides stronger authentication is essential. This paper proposes a novel, two-layered multi-factor authentication (2L-MFA) framework using blockchain to enhance IoT devices and user security. The first level of authentication is for IoT devices, one that considers secret keys, geographical location, and physically unclonable function (PUF). Proof-of-authentication (PoAh) and elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman are followed for lightweight and low latency support. Second-level authentication for IoT users, which are sub-categorized into four levels, each defined by specific factors such as identity, password, and biometrics. The first level involves a matrix-based password; the second level utilizes the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA); and levels 3 and 4 are secured with iris and finger vein, providing comprehensive and robust authentication. We deployed fuzzy logic to validate the authentication and make the system more robust. The 2L-MFA model significantly improves performance, reducing registration, login, and authentication times by up to 25%, 50%, and 25%, respectively, facilitating quicker cloud access post-authentication and enhancing overall efficiency.

Given the current maturity of printed technologies, Organic Thin-Film Transistors (OTFT) still show high initial variability, which can be beneficial for its exploitation in security applications. In this work, the process-related variability and aging of commercial OTFTs have been characterized to evaluate the feasibility of OTFTs-based Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) implementation. For our devices, ID-based PUFs show good uniformity and uniqueness. However, PUFs’ reliability could be compromised because of the observed transient and aging effects in the OTFTs, which could hinder the reproducibility of the generated fingerprints. A systematic study of the aging of OTFTs has been performed to evaluate the PUFs’ reliability. Our results suggest that the observed transient and aging effects could be mitigated so that the OTFTs-based PUFs’ reliability could be improved.

In Internet of Vehicles (IoV), the secure data transmission between vehicles and transportation infrastructure effectively ensures the safety and fast driving of vehicles, while authentication and key agreement protocols between vehicles and transportation infrastructure (V2I) play an important role in ensuring data security and user privacy. However, how to design a provably secure and lightweight V2I authentication protocol for IoV is a challenge. Recently, Kumar et al. proposed a conditional privacy-preserving and desynchronization-resistant authentication protocol for IoV, but we find that Kumar et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to identity guessing attacks, impersonation attacks, and a lack of session key secrecy once the attacker obtains data stored in smart card through side-channel attacks. We also point out that Kumar et al.’s protocol is vulnerable to Roadside Unit (RSU) captured attacks and lacks perfect forward secrecy. Therefore, we propose an improved V2I authentication protocol for IoV, which uses the Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) to resist RSU captured attacks, and designed a three-factor secrecy strategy to resist side-channel attacks; a conditional privacy-preserving strategy was also adopted to achieve anonymity and malicious user tracking. Furthermore, the proposed protocol is provably secure under the random oracle model and has low computation and communication costs.

The spectrum of Internet of Things (IoT) applications is vast. It serves in various domains such as smart homes, intelligent buildings, health care, emergency response, and many more, reflecting the exponential market penetration of the IoT. Various security threats have been made to modern-day systems. Cyberattacks have seen a marked surge in frequency, particularly in recent times. The growing concern centers around the notable rise in cloning attacks, persisting as a significant and looming threat. In our work, an in-depth survey on the IoT that employs physically unclonable functions (PUFs) was conducted. The first contribution analyzes PUF-based authentication, communication protocols, and applications. It also tackles the eleven challenges faced by the research community, proposes solutions to these challenges, and highlights cloning attacks. The second contribution suggests the implementation of a framework model known as PUF3S-ML, specifically crafted for PUF authentication in the Internet of Things (IoT), incorporating innovative lightweight encryption techniques. It focuses on safeguarding smart IoT networks from cloning attacks. The key innovation framework comprises three stages of PUF authentication with IoT devices and an intelligent cybersecurity monitoring unit for IoT networks. In the methodology of this study, a survey relevant to the concerns was conducted. More data were provided previously regarding architecture, enabling technologies, and IoT challenges. After conducting an extensive survey of 125 papers, our analysis revealed 23 papers directly relevant to our domain. Furthermore, within this subset, we identified 11 studies specifically addressing the intersection of communication protocols with PUFs. These findings highlight the targeted relevance and potential contributions of the existing literature to our research focus.

Vehicle area networks (VANs) encompass a spectrum of communication modes, including point-to-point visible light communication, 5G/6G cellular wireless communication, and Wi-Fi ad hoc multihop communication. The main focus of this paper is the introduction and application of physically unclonable functions (PUFs) as a pivotal element in secure key generation, authentication processes, and trust metric definition for neighboring vehicles. The multifaceted protocols proposed herein encompass comprehensive security considerations, ranging from authentication and anonymity to the imperative aspects of the proof of presence, freshness, and ephemeral session key exchanges. This paper provides a systematic and comprehensive framework for enhancing security in VANs, which is of paramount importance in the context of modern smart transportation systems. The contributions of this work are multifarious and can be summarized as follows: (1) Presenting an innovative and robust approach to secure key generation based on PUFs, ensuring the dynamic nature of the authentication. (2) Defining trust metrics reliant on PUFs to ascertain the authenticity and integrity of proximate vehicles. (3) Using the proposed framework to enable seamless transitions between different communication protocols, such as the migration from 5G/6G to Wi-Fi, by introducing the concept of multimodal authentication, which accommodates a wide spectrum of vehicle capabilities. Furthermore, upholding privacy through the encryption and concealment of PUF responses safeguards the identity of vehicles during communication.

The proposed 8-Transistor (8T) Physically Unclonable Function (PUF), in conjunction with the power gating technique, can significantly accelerate a single evaluation cycle more than 100,000 times faster than a 6-Transistor (6T) Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) PUF. The 8T PUF is built to swiftly eliminate data remanence and maximise physical mismatch. Moreover, a two-phase power gating module is devised to provide controllable power on/off cycles for the chosen PUF clusters in order to facilitate fast statistical measurements and curb the in-rush current. The architecture and hardware implementation of the power-gated PUF are developed to accommodate fast multiple evaluations of PUF Responses. The fast speed enables a new data processing method, which coordinates Dark-bit masking and Multiple Temporal Majority Voting (TMV) in different Process, Voltage and Temperature (PVT) corners or during field usage, hence greatly reducing the Bit Error Rate (BER) and the hardware penalty for error correction. The designs are based on the UMC 65 nm technology and aim to tape out an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chip. Post-layout Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are performed with Cadence, and the extracted PUF Responses are processed with Matlab to evaluate the 8T PUF performance and statistical metrics for subsequent inclusion in PUF Responses, which comprise the novelty of this approach.

The security of web applications in an enterprise is of paramount importance. To strengthen the security of applications, the identification and mitigation of vulnerabilities through appropriate countermeasures becomes imperative. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 API Security Risks, 2023 Edition, indicates the prominent vulnerabilities of API security risks. Broken authentication, however, is placed in second position with level-3 exploitability, level-2 prevalence, level-3 detectability, and level-3 technical impact. To mitigate this vulnerability, many mitigation strategies have been proposed by using the cryptographic primitives wherein two techniques, namely hashing and PUF, are used. Some of the proposals have integrated the concepts of hashing and PUF. However, the unnecessarily lengthy and complex mathematics used in these proposals makes them unsuitable for current API-based application scenarios. Therefore, in this paper, the authors propose a privacy-preserving authentication protocol that incorporates the capability of both mechanisms in an easy and low-complexity manner. In addition to overcoming existing limitations, the proposed protocol is tested to provide more security properties over existing schemes. Analysis of their performance has demonstrated that the proposed solutions are secure, efficient, practical, and effective for API-based web applications in an enterprise environment.

The Space–Air–Ground Integrated Network (SAGIN) expands cyberspace greatly. Dynamic network architecture, complex communication links, limited resources, and diverse environments make SAGIN’s authentication and key distribution much more difficult. Public key cryptography is a better choice for terminals to access SAGIN dynamically, but it is time-consuming. The semiconductor superlattice (SSL) is a strong Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) to be the hardware root of security, and the matched SSL pairs can achieve full entropy key distribution through an insecure public channel. Thus, an access authentication and key distribution scheme is proposed. The inherent security of SSL makes the authentication and key distribution spontaneously achieved without a key management burden and solves the assumption that excellent performance is based on pre-shared symmetric keys. The proposed scheme achieves the intended authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and forward security, which can defend against masquerade attacks, replay attacks, and man-in-the-middle attacks. The formal security analysis substantiates the security goal. The performance evaluation results confirm that the proposed protocols have an obvious advantage over the elliptic curve or bilinear pairings-based protocols. Compared with the protocols based on the pre-distributed symmetric key, our scheme shows unconditional security and dynamic key management with the same level performance.

Internet of Drones (IoD), designed to coordinate the access of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is a specific application of the Internet of Things (IoT). Drones are used to control airspace and offer services such as rescue, traffic surveillance, environmental monitoring, delivery and so on. However, IoD continues to suffer from privacy and security issues. Firstly, messages are transmitted over public channels in IoD environments, which compromises data security. Further, sensitive data can also be extracted from stolen mobile devices of remote users. Moreover, drones are susceptible to physical capture and manipulation by adversaries, which are called drone capture attacks. Thus, the development of a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is essential to overcoming these security vulnerabilities, even on resource-constrained drones. In 2021, Akram et al. proposed a secure and lightweight user–drone authentication scheme for drone networks. However, we discovered that Akram et al.’s scheme is susceptible to user and drone impersonation, verification table leakage, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. Furthermore, their scheme cannot provide perfect forward secrecy. To overcome the aforementioned security vulnerabilities, we propose a secure mutual authentication and key agreement scheme between user and drone pairs. The proposed scheme utilizes physical unclonable function (PUF) to give drones uniqueness and resistance against drone stolen attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme uses a fuzzy extractor to utilize the biometrics of users as secret parameters. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme using informal security analysis, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, a Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. We also compared the security features and performance of the proposed scheme and the existing related schemes. Therefore, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme is suitable for IoD environments that can provide users with secure and convenient wireless communications.

The smart home is a crucial embodiment of the internet of things (IoT), which can facilitate users to access smart home services anytime and anywhere. Due to the limited resources of cloud computing, it cannot meet users’ real-time needs. Therefore, edge computing emerges as the times require, providing users with better real-time access and storage. The application of edge computing in the smart home environment can enable users to enjoy smart home services. However, users and smart devices communicate through public channels, and malicious attackers may intercept information transmitted through public channels, resulting in user privacy disclosure. Therefore, it is a critical issue to protect the secure communication between users and smart devices in the smart home environment. Furthermore, authentication protocols in smart home environments also have some security challenges. In this paper, we propose an anonymous authentication protocol that applies edge computing to the smart home environment to protect communication security between entities. To protect the security of smart devices, we embed physical unclonable functions (PUF) into each smart device. Real-or-random model, informal security analysis, and ProVerif are adopted to verify the security of our protocol. Finally, we compare our protocol with existing protocols regarding security and performance. The comparison results demonstrate that our protocol has higher security and slightly better performance.

Entropy is a measure of uncertainty or randomness. It is the foundation for almost all cryptographic systems. True random number generators (TRNGs) and physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are the silicon primitives to respectively harvest dynamic and static entropy to generate random bit streams. In this survey paper, we present a systematic and comprehensive review of different state-of-the-art methods to harvest entropy from silicon-based devices, including the implementations, applications, and the security of the designs. Furthermore, we conclude the trends of the entropy source design to point out the current spots of entropy harvesting.

Hardware acceleration of cryptography algorithms represents an emerging approach to obtain benefits in terms of speed and side-channel resistance compared to software implementations. In addition, a hardware implementation can provide the possibility of unifying the functionality with some secure primitive, for example, a true random number generator (TRNG) or a physical unclonable function (PUF). This paper presents a unified PUF-ChaCha20 in a field-programmable gate-array (FPGA) implementation. The problems and solutions of the PUF implementation are described, exploiting the metastability in latches. The Xilinx Artix-7 XC7A100TCSG324-1 FPGA implementation occupies 2416 look-up tables (LUTs) and 1026 flips-flops (FFs), reporting a 3.11% area overhead. The PUF exhibits values of 49.15%, 47.52%, and 99.25% for the average uniformity, uniqueness, and reliability, respectively. Finally, ChaCha20 reports a speed of 0.343 cycles per bit with the unified implementation.

In IoT-based environments, smart services can be provided to users under various environments, such as smart homes, smart factories, smart cities, smart transportation, and healthcare, by utilizing sensing devices. Nevertheless, a series of security problems may arise because of the nature of the wireless channel in the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for utilizing IoT services. Authentication and key agreements are essential elements for providing secure services in WSNs. Accordingly, two-factor and three-factor-based authentication protocol research is being actively conducted. However, IoT service users can be vulnerable to ID/password pair guessing attacks by setting easy-to-remember identities and passwords. In addition, sensors and sensing devices deployed in IoT environments are vulnerable to capture attacks. To address this issue, in this paper, we analyze the protocols of Chunka et al., Amintoosi et al., and Hajian et al. and describe their security vulnerabilities. Moreover, this paper introduces PUF and honey list techniques with three-factor authentication to design protocols resistant to ID/password pair guessing, brute-force, and capture attacks. Accordingly, we introduce PUFTAP-IoT, which can provide secure services in the IoT environment. To prove the security of PUFTAP-IoT, we perform formal analyses through Burrows Abadi Needham (BAN) logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and scyther simulation tools. In addition, we demonstrate the efficiency of the protocol compared with other authentication protocols in terms of security, computational cost, and communication cost, showing that it can provide secure services in IoT environments.

With the development of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), industrial wireless sensors need to upload the collected private data to the cloud servers, resulting in a large amount of private data being exposed on the Internet. Private data are vulnerable to hacking. Many complex wireless-sensor-authentication protocols have been proposed. In this paper, we proposed an efficient authentication protocol for IIoT-oriented wireless sensor networks. The protocol introduces the PUF chip, and uses the Bloom filter to save and query the challenge–response pairs generated by the PUF chip. It ensures the security of the physical layer of the device and reduces the computing cost and communication cost of the wireless sensor side. The protocol introduces a pre-authentication mechanism to achieve continuous authentication between the gateway and the cloud server. The overall computational cost of the protocol is reduced. Formal security analysis and informal security analysis proved that our proposed protocol has more security features. We implemented various security primitives using the MIRACL cryptographic library and GMP large number library. Our proposed protocol was compared in-depth with related work. Detailed experiments show that our proposed protocol significantly reduces the computational cost and communication cost on the wireless sensor side and the overall computational cost of the protocol.

Mobile banking, shopping, and in-app purchases utilize persistent authentication states for access to sensitive data. One-shot authentication permits access for a fixed time period. For instance, a username/password-based authentication allows a user access to all the shopping and payments data in the Amazon shopping app. Traditional user passwords and lock screens are easily compromised. Snooping attacks—observing an unsuspecting user entering passwords—and smudge attacks—examining touchscreen finger oil residue—enable compromised user authentication. Mobile device interactions provide robust human and device identity data. Such biometrics enhance authentication. In this paper, behavioral attributes during user input constitute the password. Adversary password reproduction difficulty increases since pure observation is insufficient. Current mobile continuous authentication schemes use, among others, touchscreen–swipe interactions or keyboard input timing. Many of these methods require cumbersome training or intrusive authentication. Software keyboard interactions provide a consistent biometric data stream. We develop biometric profiles using touch pressure, location, and timing. New interactions authenticate against a profile using a divergence measure. In our limited user–device data sets, the classification achieves virtually perfect accuracy.

Wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) are used in remote medical service environments to provide patients with convenient healthcare services. In a WMSN environment, patients wear a device that collects their health information and transmits the information via a gateway. Then, doctors make a diagnosis regarding the patient, utilizing the health information. However, this information can be vulnerable to various security attacks because the information is exchanged via an insecure channel. Therefore, a secure authentication scheme is necessary for WMSNs. In 2021, Masud et al. proposed a lightweight and anonymity-preserving user authentication scheme for healthcare environments. We discover that Masud et al.’s scheme is insecure against offline password guessing, user impersonation, and privileged insider attacks. Furthermore, we find that Masud et al.’s scheme cannot ensure user anonymity. To address the security vulnerabilities of Masud et al.’s scheme, we propose a three-factor-based mutual authentication scheme with a physical unclonable function (PUF). The proposed scheme is secure against various security attacks and provides anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, and mutual authentication utilizing biometrics and PUF. To prove the security features of our scheme, we analyze the scheme using informal analysis, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, the Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. Furthermore, we estimate our scheme’s security features, computation costs, communication costs, and energy consumption compared with the other related schemes. Consequently, we demonstrate that our scheme is suitable for WMSNs.

In order to realize image information security starting from the data source, challenge–response (CR) device authentication, based on a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) with a 2 Mpixel CMOS image sensor (CIS), is studied, in which variation of the transistor in the pixel array is utilized. As each CR pair can be used only once to make the CIS PUF resistant to the modeling attack, CR authentication with CIS can be carried out 4050 times, with basic post-processing to generate the PUF ID. If a larger number of authentications is required, advanced post-processing using Lehmer encoding can be utilized to carry out authentication 14,858 times. According to the PUF performance evaluation, the authentication error rate is less than 0.001 ppm. Furthermore, the area overhead of the CIS chip for the basic and advanced post-processing is only 1% and 2%, respectively, based on a Verilog HDL model circuit design.

We use commercial magnetic memory to realize morphable security primitives, a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) and a True Random Number Generator (TRNG). The PUF realized by manipulating the write time and the TRNG is realized by tweaking the number of write pulses. Our analysis indicates that more than 75% bits in the PUF are unusable without any correction due to their inability to exhibit any randomness. We exploit temporal randomness of working columns to fix the unusable columns and write latency to fix the unusable rows during the enrollment. The intra-HD, inter-HD, energy, bandwidth and area of the proposed PUF are found to be 0, 46.25%, 0.14 pJ/bit, 0.34 Gbit/s and 0.385 μm2/bit (including peripherals) respectively. The proposed TRNG provides all possible outcomes with a standard deviation of 0.0062, correlation coefficient of 0.05 and an entropy of 0.95. The energy, bandwidth and area of the proposed TRNG is found to be 0.41 pJ/bit, 0.12 Gbit/s and 0.769 μm2/bit (including peripherals). The performance of the proposed TRNG has also been tested with NIST test suite. The proposed designs are compared with other magnetic PUFs and TRNGs from other literature.

RNAs play important roles in gene expression through translation and RNA splicing. Regulation of specific RNAs is useful to understand and manipulate specific transcripts. Pumilio and fem-3 mRNA-binding factor (PUF) proteins, programmable RNA-binding proteins, are promising tools for regulating specific RNAs by fusing them with various functional domains. The key question is: How can PUF-based molecular tools efficiently regulate RNA functions? Here, we show that the combination of multiple PUF proteins, compared to using a single PUF protein, targeting independent RNA sequences at the 3′ untranslated region (UTR) of a target transcript caused cooperative effects to regulate the function of the target RNA by luciferase reporter assays. It is worth noting that a higher efficacy was achieved with smaller amounts of each PUF expression vector introduced into the cells compared to using a single PUF protein. This strategy not only efficiently regulates target RNA functions but would also be effective in reducing off-target effects due to the low doses of each expression vector.

Because the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) requires technology that transfers information between objects without human intervention, the core of IoT security will be secure authentication between devices or between devices and servers. Software-based authentication may be a security vulnerability in IoT, but hardware-based security technology can provide a strong security environment. Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are hardware security element suitable for lightweight applications. PUFs can generate challenge–response pairs(CRPs) that cannot be controlled or predicted by utilizing inherent physical variations that occur in the manufacturing process. In particular, the pulsewidth-based memristive PUF (pm-PUF) improves security performance by applying different write pulse widths and bank structures. Bloom filters (BFs) are probabilistic data structures that answer membership queries using small memories. Bloom filters can improve search performance and reduce memory usage and are used in areas such as networking, security, big data, and IoT. In this paper, we propose a structure that applies Bloom filters based on the pm-PUF to reduce PUF data transmission errors. The proposed structure uses two different Bloom filter types that store different information and that are located in front of and behind the pm-PUF, reducing unnecessary access by removing challenges from attacker access. Simulation results show that the proposed structure decreases the data transmission error rate and reuse rate as the Bloom filter size increases; the simulation results also show that the proposed structure improves pm-PUF security with a very small Bloom filter memory.

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are primitives that are designed to leverage naturally occurring variations to produce a random bitstring. Current PUF designs are typically implemented in silicon or utilize variations found in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. Because of this, existing designs are insufficient for the authentication of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). In this paper, we propose a novel PUF design that leverages board variations in a manufactured PCB to generate unique and stable IDs for each PCB. In particular, a single copper trace is used as a source of randomness for bitstring generation. The trace connects three notch filter structures in series, each of which is designed to reject specific but separate frequencies. The bitstrings generated using data measured from a set of PCBs are analyzed using statistical tests to illustrate that high levels of uniqueness and randomness are achievable.

Random number generators (RNG) play an important role in many sensor network systems and applications, such as those requiring secure and robust communications. In this paper, we develop a high-security and high-throughput hardware true random number generator, called PUFKEY, which consists of two kinds of physical unclonable function (PUF) elements. Combined with a conditioning algorithm, true random seeds are extracted from the noise on the start-up pattern of SRAM memories. These true random seeds contain full entropy. Then, the true random seeds are used as the input for a non-deterministic hardware RNG to generate a stream of true random bits with a throughput as high as 803 Mbps. The experimental results show that the bitstream generated by the proposed PUFKEY can pass all standard national institute of standards and technology (NIST) randomness tests and is resilient to a wide range of security attacks.

A 39 fJ/bit IC identification system based on FET mismatch is presented and implemented in a 130 nm CMOS process. ID bits are generated based on the ΔVT between identically drawn NMOS devices due to manufacturing variation, and the ID cell structure allows for the characterization of ID bit reliability by characterizing ΔVT . An addressing scheme is also presented that allows for reliable on-chip identification of ICs in the presence of unreliable ID bits. An example implementation is presented that can address 1000 unique ICs, composed of 31 ID bits and having an error rate less than 10-6, with up to 21 unreliable bits.

Secret key leakage in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a high security risk especially when sensor nodes are deployed in hostile environment and physically accessible to attackers. With nowadays semi/fully-invasive attack techniques attackers can directly derive the cryptographic key from non-volatile memory (NVM) storage. Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) is a promising technology to resist node capture attacks, and it also provides a low cost and tamper-resistant key provisioning solution. In this paper, we designed a PUF based on double-data-rate SDRAM Type 3 (DDR3) memory by exploring its memory decay characteristics. We also described a prototype of 128-bit key generation based on DDR3 PUF with integrated fuzzy extractor. Due to the wide adoption of DDR3 memory in WSN, our proposed DDR3 PUF technology with high security levels and no required hardware changes is suitable for a wide range of WSN applications.

Counterfeiting has always been a concern, costing a significant amount of money and causing losses in international trading markets. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tag Anti-counterfeiting is a conceptual solution that has received attention in the past few years. In this article, we present a survey study on the research topic of anti-counterfeiting products using RFID tags on merchandise. As this issue evolved in industry, there were several techniques used to address the problem; each technique uses a different concept and mechanism in resolving the issue. Each technique also has different pros and cons which we will address at the end of this paper with our findings. As we explore RFID technology and its implementation, we will discuss previous research before proceeding to the core of the topic of RFID Anti-counterfeiting based on the methods used. We compare the different techniques used at the end of the paper.

Attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) devices are on the rise. Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are proposed as a robust and lightweight solution to secure IoT devices. The main advantage of a PUF compared to the current classical cryptographic solutions is its compatibility with IoT devices with limited computational resources. In this paper, we investigate the maturity of this technology and the challenges toward PUF utilization in IoT that still need to be addressed.