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Healthcare 4.0 promises enormous breakthroughs in the Internet of Medical Device (IoMD) environment, allowing billions of devices to communicate seamlessly. The introduction of sixth-generation (6G) networks with IoMD improves smart healthcare services by enabling more efficient, robust, sustainable, low cost, and ubiquitous solutions, as well as improving sensing, communication, and interaction capabilities in context-aware settings. However, providing the secure authentication of these devices while also safeguarding data integrity presents considerable challenges. The current systems that rely on centralized servers are vulnerable to unwanted access and modification. To overcome this challenge, the use of Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) and blockchain technology can be made. In this paper, PUF-based authentication technique is integrated with blockchain technology to secure IoMD network in healthcare 4.0. To make it energy efficient as IoMD considered as constrained device, a novel consensus mechanism "Proof-of-Energy" has been introduced which will increase the transaction processing speed while reducing energy consumption. The experimental result shows the proposed model exhibits better security, efficiency and performance in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secret key is stored in an ideal tamper-proof device so that a vehicle can implement a secure authentication with the road-side units (RSUs) and other drivers. However, some adversaries can capture the secret key by physical attacks. To resist physical attacks, we propose a physical-preserving authentication based on a physical unclonable function for vehicular ad hoc networks. In the proposed scheme, a physical unclonable function is deployed on the vehicle and the RSU to provide a challenge–response mechanism. A secret key is only generated by the challenge–response mechanism when it is needed, which eliminates the need to store a long-term secret key. As a result, this prevents secret keys from being captured by adversaries, improving system security. In addition, route planning is introduced into the proposed scheme so that a vehicle can obtain the authentication key of RSUs on its route before vehicle-to-infrastructure authentication, which greatly speeds up the authentication when the vehicle enters the RSUs' coverage. Furthermore, a detailed analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme achieves security objectives in vehicular ad hoc networks. Ultimately, when contrasted with similar schemes, the performance assessment demonstrates that our proposed scheme surpasses others in terms of computational overhead, communication overhead and packet loss rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical unclonable function (PUF) is attractive in modern encryption technologies. Addressing the disadvantage of slow data storage/authentication in optical PUF is paramount for practical applications but remains an on‐going challenge. Here, a highly efficient PUF strategy based on random structural color domains (SCDs) of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) is proposed for the first time, combing with hyperspectral imaging system (HIS) for ultrafast storage and authentication. By controlling the growth and fusion behavior of the tactoids of CNC, the SCDs display an irregular and random distribution of colors, shapes, sizes, and reflectance spectra, which grant unique and inherent fingerprint‐like characteristics that are non‐duplicated. Based on images and spectra, these fingerprint features are used to develop two sets of PUF key generation methods, which can be respectively authenticated at the user‐end and the manufacturer‐front‐end that achieving a high coding capacity of at least 22304. Notably, the use of HIS greatly shortens the time of key reading and generation (≈5 s for recording, 0.5–0.7 s for authentication). This new optical PUF labels can not only solve slow data storage and complicated authentication in optical PUF, but also impulse the development of CNC in industrial applications by reducing color uniformity requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) have emerged as a promising encryption technology, utilizing intrinsic physical identifiers that offer enhanced security and tamper resistance. Multi‐level PUFs boost system complexity, thereby improving system reliability and fault tolerance. However, crosstalk‐free multi‐level PUFs remain a persistent challenge. In this study, a hierarchical PUF system that harnesses the spontaneous phase separation of silk fibroin /PVA blend and the random distribution of silicon‐vacancy diamonds within the blend is presented. The thermodynamic instability of phase separation and inherent unpredictability of diamond dispersion gives rise to intricate random patterns at two distinct scales, enabling time‐efficient hierarchical authentication for cryptographic keys. These patterns are complementary yet independent, inherently resistant to replication and damage thus affording robust security and reliability to the proposed system. Furthermore, customized authentication algorithms are constructed: visual PUFs authentication utilizes neural network combined structural similarity index measure, while spectral PUFs authentication employs Hamming distance and cross‐correlation bit operation. This hierarchical PUF system attains a high recognition rate without interscale crosstalk. Additionally, the coding capacity is exponentially enhanced using M‐ary encoding to reinforce multi‐level encryption. Hierarchical PUFs hold significant potential for immediate application, offering unprecedented data protection and cryptographic key authentication capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For enhanced security in hardware‐based security devices, it is essential to extract various independent characteristics from a single device to generate multiple keys based on specific values. Additionally, the secure destruction of authentication information is crucial for the integrity of the data. Doped amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a‐IGZO) thin‐film transistors (TFTs) using poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF‐HFP) induce a dipole doping effect through a phase‐transition process, creating physically unclonable function (PUF) devices for secure user information protection. The PUF security key, generated at VGS = 20 V in a 20 × 10 grid, demonstrates uniformity of 42% and inter‐Hamming distance (inter‐HD) of 49.79% in the β‐phase of PVDF‐HFP. However, in the γ‐phase, the uniformity drops to 22.5%, and inter‐HD decreases to 35.74%, indicating potential security key destruction during the phase transition. To enhance security, a multi‐factor authentication (MFA) system is integrated, utilizing five security keys extracted from various TFT parameters. The security keys from turn‐on voltage (VON), VGS = 20 V, VGS = 30 V, mobility, and threshold voltage (Vth) exhibit near‐ideal uniformities and inter‐HDs, with the highest values of 58% and 51.68%, respectively. The dual security system, combining phase transition and MFA, establishes a robust protection mechanism for privacy‐sensitive user information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Physical unclonable function (PUF) is attractive in modern encryption technologies. Addressing the disadvantage of slow data storage/authentication in optical PUF is paramount for practical applications but remains an on‐going challenge. Here, a highly efficient PUF strategy based on random structural color domains (SCDs) of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) is proposed for the first time, combing with hyperspectral imaging system (HIS) for ultrafast storage and authentication. By controlling the growth and fusion behavior of the tactoids of CNC, the SCDs display an irregular and random distribution of colors, shapes, sizes, and reflectance spectra, which grant unique and inherent fingerprint‐like characteristics that are non‐duplicated. Based on images and spectra, these fingerprint features are used to develop two sets of PUF key generation methods, which can be respectively authenticated at the user‐end and the manufacturer‐front‐end that achieving a high coding capacity of at least 22304. Notably, the use of HIS greatly shortens the time of key reading and generation (≈5 s for recording, 0.5–0.7 s for authentication). This new optical PUF labels can not only solve slow data storage and complicated authentication in optical PUF, but also impulse the development of CNC in industrial applications by reducing color uniformity requirement.

The Internet of Things (IoT) reflects the internetworking of numerous devices with limited computational capabilities. Given the ad-hoc network formation and the dynamic nature of node membership, secure device authentication mechanisms are critical. This paper proposes a novel two-factor authentication protocol for IoT devices. The protocol integrates physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and radio frequency fingerprints (RFFs), providing a unique identification method for each device. Compared with existing PUF-based schemes, the proposed protocol facilitates the mutual authentication of two devices without the need for a trusted third party. Our design is resilient to the intrinsic noise associated with PUFs and RFFs, ensuring reliable authentication, even under various operational conditions. Furthermore, we have implemented an obfuscation technique to secure shared authentication data against eavesdropping attempts aimed at modeling the security primitive, i.e., the PUF, through machine learning algorithms. We have validated the performance of our protocol and demonstrated its efficacy against various security threats, including impersonation, message replay, and PUF modeling attacks. Notably, the validation results indicate that predicting any given PUF response bit's accuracy does not exceed 56%, making it as unpredictable as a random guess. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we demonstrate the generation and storage of random voltage values using a ring oscillator consisting of feedback field-effect transistors (FBFETs). This innovative approach utilizes the logic-in-memory function of FBFETs to extract continuous output voltages from oscillatory cycles. The ring oscillator exhibited uniform probability distributions of 51.6% for logic 0 and 48.4% for logic 1. The generation of analog voltages provides binary random variables that are stored for over 5000 s. This demonstrates the potential of the ring oscillator in advanced physical functions and true random number generator technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to halance the security requirements and resource costs of the three party authentication protocols for radio frequency identification(RFID), this paper proposed a protocol based on Chebyshev chaotic mapping and physical unclonable function(PUF), taking advantage of the semi-gmap property and chaotic property of Chebyshev polynomials. It used Chebyshev chaotic mapping to achieve secret sharing among tags, readers, and servers, and used random numbers to achieve freshness of each session which could resist replay attack, and also to realize the anonymity of readers and tags. It used the PUF function to achieve the authentication of the label and to resist physical cloning attacks. Security analysis shows that this protoenl can effec tively resist various malicious attacks such as tracking, replay, physical cloning, and de-synchronization attacks. Moreover, it verified the security properties of the protocol using formal methods, including BAN Ingie and Scyther tool. Compared with recent studies, this protocol compensates for the security deficiencies of similar RFID protocols, balancing harthcare costs as much as possible while meeting various security attribute requirements, and still fitting the limited hardware resources of RFID. It is suitable for third-party authentication scenarios in RFID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) have emerged as a promising encryption technology, utilizing intrinsic physical identifiers that offer enhanced security and tamper resistance. Multi‐level PUFs boost system complexity, thereby improving system reliability and fault tolerance. However, crosstalk‐free multi‐level PUFs remain a persistent challenge. In this study, a hierarchical PUF system that harnesses the spontaneous phase separation of silk fibroin /PVA blend and the random distribution of silicon‐vacancy diamonds within the blend is presented. The thermodynamic instability of phase separation and inherent unpredictability of diamond dispersion gives rise to intricate random patterns at two distinct scales, enabling time‐efficient hierarchical authentication for cryptographic keys. These patterns are complementary yet independent, inherently resistant to replication and damage thus affording robust security and reliability to the proposed system. Furthermore, customized authentication algorithms are constructed: visual PUFs authentication utilizes neural network combined structural similarity index measure, while spectral PUFs authentication employs Hamming distance and cross‐correlation bit operation. This hierarchical PUF system attains a high recognition rate without interscale crosstalk. Additionally, the coding capacity is exponentially enhanced using M‐ary encoding to reinforce multi‐level encryption. Hierarchical PUFs hold significant potential for immediate application, offering unprecedented data protection and cryptographic key authentication capabilities.

With the wide application of IoT technologies in the power sector, power IoT faces serious security challenges, which can be severely affected by malicious attacks and unauthorised access. Meanwhile, devices in power IoT are usually resource-constrained and deployed in a decentralised manner, making them vulnerable to physical attacks. Therefore, a robust and reliable lightweight authentication scheme needs to be constructed to guarantee its information security. A lightweight authentication scheme for the power IoT based on Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) and Chebyshev chaotic map is proposed in this paper, which achieves two-way authentication and session key negotiation between gateways and terminal devices. Comparing with traditional authentication schemes, the PUF and Chebyshev chaotic map used in this scheme have high security and lower resource overhead. PUF is used to generate Challenge and Response Pairs (CRPs) for two-way authentication and key negotiation without storing any secret information about authentication in the device memory. At the same time, Chebyshev chaotic map is used to protect the transmission of secret information such as CRPs in insecure channels. The solution is therefore resistant to attacks such as physical, machine learning modelling and impersonation, ensuring the information security of the authentication process. The proposed scheme is analyzed and verified using the formal verification tool ProVerif and improved BAN logic along with informal methods. The verification results show that the scheme satisfies 12 security properties such as two-way authentication and user anonymity. Comparative analysis with existing related authentication schemes shows that the proposed scheme has low computation and communication costs while guaranteeing security, thus rendering it suitable for resource-constrained terminal devices in the power IoT.

The secret key is stored in an ideal tamper-proof device so that a vehicle can implement a secure authentication with the road-side units (RSUs) and other drivers. However, some adversaries can capture the secret key by physical attacks. To resist physical attacks, we propose a physical-preserving authentication based on a physical unclonable function for vehicular ad hoc networks. In the proposed scheme, a physical unclonable function is deployed on the vehicle and the RSU to provide a challenge–response mechanism. A secret key is only generated by the challenge–response mechanism when it is needed, which eliminates the need to store a long-term secret key. As a result, this prevents secret keys from being captured by adversaries, improving system security. In addition, route planning is introduced into the proposed scheme so that a vehicle can obtain the authentication key of RSUs on its route before vehicle-to-infrastructure authentication, which greatly speeds up the authentication when the vehicle enters the RSUs’ coverage. Furthermore, a detailed analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme achieves security objectives in vehicular ad hoc networks. Ultimately, when contrasted with similar schemes, the performance assessment demonstrates that our proposed scheme surpasses others in terms of computational overhead, communication overhead and packet loss rate.

To support more complex and robust online services, enterprise-class applications prefer to interconnect multiple servers as the pedestal to enhance the system's interoperability. However, the multiserver architecture always struggles to reconcile the trade-off between convenience and security, leaving users exposed to a variety of network attack threats. Existing security authentication schemes based on the Chebyshev Chaotic Map for multiserver architectures cannot provide three-factor (including password, biometric feature, and smart card) security. Therefore, we propose a novel Physical-Unclonable-Function-based Lightweight Three-Factor Authentication (PUF-LTA) scheme, which can achieve three-factor security. The PUF-LTA scheme mainly includes two components: (1) PUF-assisted registration and (2) lightweight mutual authentication with one-time interaction. During the PUF-assisted registration process, to defend against side-channel attacks on smart cards, the login credentials of users are XORed with the unique identifier generated by the PUF so that the adversary cannot obtain these secret login credentials. During the lightweight mutual authentication process, we combine the Chebyshev polynomial map and symmetric encryption/decryption to negotiate the session key between users and servers, which only needs one interaction. The security performance of PUF-LTA is theoretically proved by leveraging the random oracle model. In contrast with relevant multiserver authentication schemes, PUF-LTA is more efficient and suitable for resource-constrained multiserver environments because it can ensure secure three-factor authentication and support flexible biometrics and password updates with less computation cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A physical unclonable function (PUF) is a technology designed to safeguard sensitive information and ensure data security. PUFs generate unique responses for each challenge by leveraging random deviations in the physical microstructures of integrated circuits (ICs), making it incredibly difficult to replicate them. However, traditional silicon PUFs are now susceptible to various attacks, such as modeling attacks using conventional machine learning techniques and reverse engineering strategies. As a result, PUFs based on new materials or methods are being developed to enhance their security. However, in the realm of survey papers, it has come to our attention that there is a notable scarcity of comprehensive summaries and introductions concerning these emerging PUFs. To fill this gap, this article surveys PUFs based on novel technologies in the literature. In particular, we first provide an insightful overview of four types of PUFs that are rooted in advanced technologies: bionic optical PUF, biological PUF, PUF based on printed electronics (PE), and PUF based on memristors. Based on the overview, we further discuss the evaluation results of their performance based on specific metrics and conduct a comparative analysis of their performance. Despite significant progress in areas such as limited entry and regional expertise, it is worth noting that these PUFs still have room for improvement. Therefore, we have identified their potential shortcomings and areas that require further development. Moreover, we outline various applications of PUFs and propose our own future prospects for this technology. To sum up, this article contributes to the understanding of PUFs based on novel technologies by providing an in-depth analysis of their characteristics, performance evaluation, and potential improvements. It also sheds light on the wide range of applications for PUFs and presents enticing prospects for future advancements in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated significant superiority in modern artificial intelligence (AI) applications. To accelerate the inference process of CNNs, reconfigurable CNN accelerators that support diverse networks are widely employed for AI systems. Given the ubiquitous deployment of these AI systems, there is a growing concern regarding the security of CNN accelerators and the potential attacks they may face, including hardware Trojans. This paper proposes a hardware Trojan designed to attack a crucial component of FPGA-based CNN accelerators: the reconfigurable interconnection network. Specifically, the hardware Trojan alters the data paths during activation, resulting in incorrect connections in the arithmetic circuit and consequently causing erroneous convolutional computations. To address this issue, the paper introduces a novel detection technique based on physically unclonable functions (PUFs) to safeguard the reconfigurable interconnection network against hardware Trojan attacks. Experimental results demonstrate that by incorporating a mere 0.27% hardware overhead to the accelerator, the proposed hardware Trojan can degrade the inference accuracy of popular neural network architectures, including LeNet, AlexNet, and VGG, by a significant range of 8.93% to 86.20%. The implemented arbiter-PUF circuit on a Xilinx Zynq XC7Z100 platform successfully detects the presence and location of hardware Trojans in a reconfigurable interconnection network. This research highlights the vulnerability of reconfigurable CNN accelerators to hardware Trojan attacks and proposes a promising detection technique to mitigate potential security risks. The findings underscore the importance of addressing hardware security concerns in the design and deployment of AI systems utilizing FPGA-based CNN accelerators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) has recently attracted interest from both industry and academia as a potential alternative approach to secure Internet of Things (IoT) devices from the more traditional computational-based approach using conventional cryptography. PUF is a promising solution for lightweight security, where the manufacturing fluctuation process of integrated circuits is used to improve the security of IoT, as it provides low complexity design and preserves secrecy. PUF provides a low-cost low-power solution and can be implemented in both Field Programmable Gate Arrays and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of the state of the art of PUF, its architectures, protocols, and security for IoT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Password-based authentication is the most commonly used method to authenticate users to get online services. In password-based authentication, the users must remember all their complex passwords and also need to update them constantly. Since users do not utilize high-entropy passwords, password-based authentication mechanisms are susceptible to offline password-guessing attacks. Passwordless authentication protocol has therefore been developed by researchers. In this work, we propose a secure authentication mechanism that combines a password-protected biometric with physically unclonable functions (PUF). PUF authentication is a cryptographic technology used to provide secure authentication. PUF authentication works by using the physical characteristics of a device to generate a unique cryptographic key. This key is then used to authenticate the device and grant access to protected resources. PUF authentication can be used to protect data, networks, and communication systems from unauthorized access. The technology is also used to protect against replay attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and other forms of malicious activity. PUF authentication is cost-effective and provides a high level of security. Our suggested methodology gets over issues with existing systems including Key Compromise Impersonation Attacks, Wrong Login, and Server Registration Complexity. The proposed protocol is validated using"Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA)" and Scyther tool and its security is explicitly demonstrated by"BAN Logic". Furthermore, by contrasting several parameter metrics with those of the existing systems, the efficiency of our technique is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the dramatic increase of resource-constrained Internet of Things devices, robust and lightweight security primitives are emerging to protect such devices from malicious attacks. Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is a promising candidate, typically used for secure key generation. An SRAM PUF exploits manufacturing process variations to generate device-specific responses based on the random start-up values (SUVs), after the device is powered up. However, a Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor aging mechanism, Bias Temperature Instability (BTI), might be exploited to change the original SUVs of an SRAM PUF. Based on this fact, we propose a physical cloning process using BTI to modify SRAM SUVs and create physical counterfeits. The produced counterfeit is reliable and can act as the target PUF to generate error-free keys, so it is potentially able to be implemented in malicious attacks. To prevent this physical cloning attack, we propose a scheme without any modifications on the present SRAM PUF circuit, which is to pre-charge a PUF before it is powered up, so that its response can be affected by those transistors that cannot be precisely aged in the cloning process. Our simulation results indicate the presented cloning process can produce a counterfeit with 98.64% similarity to a conventional SRAM PUF in reasonable time, but the similarity is largely reduced to 51% by introducing the pre-charge scheme as prevention. Finally, we show security and reliability metrics of SRAM PUFs are not affected by the extra pre-charge phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are a handy security primitive for resource-constrained devices. They offer an alternative to the resource-intensive classical hash algorithms. Using the IC differences resulting from the fabrication process, PUFs give device-specific outputs (responses) when given the same inputs (challenges). Hence, without using a device-specific key, PUFs can generate device-specific responses. FPGAs are one of the platforms that are heavily studied as a candidate for PUF implementation. The idea is that a PUF that is designed as an HDL code can be used as part of the static design or as a dynamic accelerator. Previous works studied PUF implementation as part of the static design. In contrast to the state-of-the-art, this letter studies PUFs when used as runtime reconfigurable accelerators. In this letter, we find that not all regions of an FPGA are equally suitable for implementing different PUF types. Regions, where clock routing resources exist, are the worst suited for PUF implementation. Moreover, we find out that for certain PUF types, the property of dynamic partial reconfiguration can lead to performance degradation if not applied carefully. When static routing passing through the region increases, the PUF performance degrades significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a new concept of physical unclonable functions (PUFs) is introduced comprising reduced graphene oxide (GO) materials. To create a disordered conductivity distribution, two types of GO are used: HGO, are produced by the conventional Hummers' method, and PGO, produced by Brodie's method with an additional unique purification procedure. It is found that PGO becomes graphene-like after room-temperature chemical reduction. These two reduced GOs have a distinct conductivity difference of up to 104 times. By blending these two materials, a random mixture is created that can generate a highly unpredictable electrical signal, serving as an ideal security key with strong randomness and uniqueness. The optimized PUF device, based on this approach, demonstrates excellent performance in generating secure keys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Commodity fraud poses significant economic and public health risks while jeopardizing market stability. A promising avenue for addressing this issue involves the incorporation of physical unclonable function (PUF) in anti‐counterfeiting labels for commodity authentication purposes. PUFs are a large number of unbreakable security labels generated through a random process, which exhibit unique physical pattern responses that are impervious to replication. In particular, a novel kind of a PUF model, called structural color‐based PUFs, combing the structural color characteristics of angle‐dependent stability and brightness with unclonable property, offers unassailable encryption capabilities and serves as a formidable safeguard against forgery. This review undertakes a comprehensive summary of recent advancements in PUF technology leveraging structural color materials. Moreover, it provides a systematic description of the recognition and authentication technology employed in optical structural color PUFs. Finally, a prospective summary and outlook is proposed to explain existing challenges, and highlight potential developments in anti‐counterfeiting technology incorporating structural color PUF labels.

With recent advancements in the Internet of things, challenges to secure devices and data related to devices have increased. Adversaries using different threats manage to clone/hack/tamper devices by hacking credentials stored in centralised databases. In this work, a decentralised approach using blockchain is proposed to check the authenticity of the device/user trying to access the services of the service provider network. The proposed method uses public and private blockchain networks and Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) to authenticate the device/user and to store their credentials. The decentralised application runs on Hyperledger Fabric, an open-source platform for building blockchain networks. The proposed protocol is tested and implemented in the physical testbed containing Raspberry Pi and Arduino Mega's.

On-dose authentication (ODA) enhances security by incorporating customized molecular or micro-tags into each pill, preventing counterfeit products in genuine packages. ODA's security relies on tag non-replication and non-reverse engineering. Combining ODA with graphical Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) promises maximum security. PUF uses intrinsic micro or nanoscale randomness as a unique ‘fingerprint’. However, current graphical PUFs have limitations like specific illumination requirements and the use of toxic materials, restricting their use in pharmaceuticals.In this study, we propose a novel approach called on-dose PUF. This method involves embedding microspheres randomly within micro biocompatible hydrogel particles. We showcase two distinct types of such on-dose PUFs. The first type utilizes randomly distributed superparamagnetic colloids (SPC) of identical diameters, while the second type utilizes vortexed sunflower oil drops of various diameters. The diameter and coordinates of the microspheres serve as input for generating cryptographic keys. A universal circle identification and binning program is used for extracting this information. One advantage of this approach is that it enables imaging using white light illumination and low-magnification microscopy, as color and signal intensity information are not crucial. This method enables patients to verify their medication by using their mobile phones from home.To assess the performance of the proposed on-dose PUF, we conducted canonical investigations on the single-diameter system. This system can only generate one layer of cryptographic keys, making it potentially more vulnerable than the multiple-diameter system. However, the single-diameter system successfully passed NIST Statistical tests and exhibited sufficient randomness, ideal bit uniformity, Hamming distance, and device uniqueness. Furthermore, we found that the encoding capacity of the single-diameter system was 9.2×1018, providing ample labeling potential.

Mixed layers of octadecyltrichlorosilane (ODTS) and 1H,1H,2H,2H‐perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane (FOTS) on an active layer of graphene are used to induce a disordered doping state and form a robust defense system against machine‐learning attacks (ML attacks). The resulting security key is formed from a 12 × 12 array of currents produced at a low voltage of 100 mV. The uniformity and inter‐Hamming distance (HD) of the security key are 50.0 ± 12.3% and 45.5 ± 16.7%, respectively, indicating higher security performance than other graphene‐based security keys. Raman spectroscopy confirmed the uniqueness of the 10,000 points, with the degree of shift of the G peak distinguishing the number of carriers. The resulting defense system has a 10.33% ML attack accuracy, while a FOTS‐inserted graphene device is easily predictable with a 44.81% ML attack accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly popular in recent years and are applied in various fields, from commercial and scientific to military and humanitarian operations. However, their usage presents many challenges, including limited resources, scalability issues, insecure communication, and inefficient solutions. We developed a secure and scalable registration protocol to address these issues using LoRa technology. Our solution involves the usage of the physical unclonable function (PUF) and blockchain technology for key exchange. PUF also ensures security against physical tampering, and blockchain is applied to share the symmetric key among the base stations. After the registration, the later communication messages are encrypted with AES-GCM to provide authentication and confidentiality between the parties. We conducted a security analysis of the registration protocol using the ProVerif tool, and our solution meets the security requirements, including the mutual authentication of entities, key freshness, key secrecy and also key confirmation properties. Besides the Proverif-based analysis, an informal security analysis is also provided that shows that the registration is protected against a variety of well-known active and passive security attacks. As drone resources are limited, we also prepared a proof of concept to test our solution under real-life conditions, focusing on efficiency and lightweight operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain-based applications necessitate the authentication of connected devices if they are employed as blockchain oracles. Alongside identity authentication, it is crucial to ensure resistance against tampering, including safeguarding against unauthorized alterations and protection against device counterfeiting or cloning. However, attaining these functionalities becomes more challenging when dealing with resource-constrained devices like low-cost IoT devices. The resources of IoT devices depend on the capabilities of the microcontroller they are built around. Low-cost devices utilize microcontrollers with limited computational power, small memory capacity, and lack advanced features such as a dedicated secure cryptographic chip. This paper proposes a method employing a Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) to authenticate identity and tamper resistance in IoT devices. The suggested PUF relies on a microcontroller's internal pull-up resistor values and, in conjunction with the microcontroller's built-in analog comparator, can also be utilized for device self-checking. A main contribution of this paper is the proposed PUF method which calculates the PUF value as the average value of many single PUF measurements, resulting in a significant increase in accuracy. The proposed PUF has been implemented successfully in a low-cost microcontroller device. Test results demonstrate that the device, specifically the microcontroller chip, can be identified with high accuracy (99.98%), and the proposed PUF method exhibits resistance against probing attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the existing authentication schemes in the smart grid environment have the drawbacks of requiring manual participation or low performance, and thus do not meet the practical needs of smart grids.A new tripartite authenticated key exchange protocol was proposed for authentication and key establishment between three parties: smart meters, service providers and control center.The protocol was based on a physical unclonable function, which removed the drawback of requiring manual participation in the operation of the protocol.The security of the protocol was demonstrated by combining BAN logic and non-formal analysis methods.Comparing with similar representative protocols, the proposed protocol has better security and higher efficiency.

The Internet of Things (IoT) reflects the internetworking of numerous devices with limited computational capabilities. Given the ad-hoc network formation and the dynamic nature of node membership, secure device authentication mechanisms are critical. This paper proposes a novel two-factor authentication protocol for IoT devices. The protocol integrates physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and radio frequency fingerprints (RFFs), providing a unique identification method for each device. Compared with existing PUF-based schemes, the proposed protocol facilitates the mutual authentication of two devices without the need for a trusted third party. Our design is resilient to the intrinsic noise associated with PUFs and RFFs, ensuring reliable authentication, even under various operational conditions. Furthermore, we have implemented an obfuscation technique to secure shared authentication data against eavesdropping attempts aimed at modeling the security primitive, i.e., the PUF, through machine learning algorithms. We have validated the performance of our protocol and demonstrated its efficacy against various security threats, including impersonation, message replay, and PUF modeling attacks. Notably, the validation results indicate that predicting any given PUF response bit’s accuracy does not exceed 56%, making it as unpredictable as a random guess.

In this study, we demonstrate the generation and storage of random voltage values using a ring oscillator consisting of feedback field-effect transistors (FBFETs). This innovative approach utilizes the logic-in-memory function of FBFETs to extract continuous output voltages from oscillatory cycles. The ring oscillator exhibited uniform probability distributions of 51.6% for logic 0 and 48.4% for logic 1. The generation of analog voltages provides binary random variables that are stored for over 5000 s. This demonstrates the potential of the ring oscillator in advanced physical functions and true random number generator technologies.

Abstract Mixed layers of octadecyltrichlorosilane (ODTS) and 1H,1H,2H,2H‐perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane (FOTS) on an active layer of graphene are used to induce a disordered doping state and form a robust defense system against machine‐learning attacks (ML attacks). The resulting security key is formed from a 12 × 12 array of currents produced at a low voltage of 100 mV. The uniformity and inter‐Hamming distance (HD) of the security key are 50.0 ± 12.3% and 45.5 ± 16.7%, respectively, indicating higher security performance than other graphene‐based security keys. Raman spectroscopy confirmed the uniqueness of the 10,000 points, with the degree of shift of the G peak distinguishing the number of carriers. The resulting defense system has a 10.33% ML attack accuracy, while a FOTS‐inserted graphene device is easily predictable with a 44.81% ML attack accuracy.

With the development of wireless communication technology and the rapid increase of user data, multi-server key agreement authentication scheme has been widely used. In order to protect users' privacy and legitimate rights, a two-factor multi-server authentication scheme based on device PUF and users' biometrics is proposed. The users' biometrics are combined with the physical characteristics of the Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF) as authentication factors, which not only ensures the security of the scheme, but it also is user-friendly without a password. The proposed scheme can be applied to telemedicine, smart home, Internet of Vehicles and other fields to achieve mutual authentication and key agreement between users and servers. In order to prove the security of the proposed scheme, the widely accepted ROR model and BAN logic are used for formal security analysis. The scheme can effectively resist various security attacks, and the comparison with existing schemes shows that it has better performance in terms of communication cost and computational complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rugged environmental factors in IoT applications and constrained on-chip resources, PUF, as a critical hardware primitive, is a promising solution for key storage, authentication, and ID generation. The existing CMOS-based Arbiter PUFs mainly suffer from low reliability and vulnerability against modeling attacks due to metastability of flipflops and linearity of additive path delays, respectively. Techniques that have been used to enhance the reliability mainly increased the area occupation. Recently magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) devices have been widely investigated in various circuits. In this article, the proposed PUF utilizes mCell devices, a class of Magnetoresistive devices employing only Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) devices, as a building block. In this article a novel nonvolatile latch is proposed to act as an arbiter and generates the responses by comparing the current values instead of delays which leads to increased the reliability by subtracting the constant variation rates of MTJs under environmental variation without adding hardware overhead. The characteristics of MTJ like nonvolatility, stochastic switching, chaotic magnetization, low power consumption, and low occupied area have made the proposed PUF to a low power, highly reliable, high randomness and ultra-compact pure magnetic arbiter PUF. The Monte Carlo HSPICE simulation results reveal that the uniformity, uniqueness, bit-aliasing, power consumption, and area of the proposed PUF are 49.24%, 49.87%, 48.64%, 10.771 $\mu \text{W}$ and 0.106 $\mu \text{m}^{2}$ , respectively. In addition, the average BER across a wide temperature range (−50 $\,^\circ \text{C}$ –150 $\,^\circ \text{C}$) and voltage range (0.05 V–0.1 V) is 0.08% and 0.18%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are hardware security primitives that utilize non-reproducible manufacturing variations to provide device-specific challenge-response pairs (CRPs). Such primitives are desirable for applications such as communication and intellectual property protection. PUFs have been gaining considerable interest from both the academic and industrial communities because of their simplicity and stability. However, many recent studies have exposed PUFs to machine-learning (ML) modeling attacks. To improve the resilience of a system to general ML attacks instead of a specific ML technique, a common solution is to improve the complexity of the system. Structures, such as XOR-PUFs, can significantly increase the nonlinearity of PUFs to provide resilience against ML attacks. However, an increase in complexity often results in an increase in area and/or a decrease in reliability. This study proposes a lightweight ring oscillator (RO)-based PUFs using an additional modulus process to improve ML resiliency. The idea was to increase the complexity of the RO-PUF without significant hardware overhead by applying a modulus process to the outcomes from the RO frequency counter. We also present a thorough investigation of the design space to balance ML resiliency and other performance metrics such as reliability, uniqueness, and uniformity.

Hardware security modules play a crucial role in protecting and preserving technologically integrated systems that are used in daily life. They employ cryptographic protocols to secure a system against adversaries. Generally, cryptographic algorithms and security keys are quintessential for maintaining the security of a system. Cryptography uses a secret key to encipher and decipher the data. These secret keys are stored in a non-volatile memory that attackers can easily access. The hardware security primitive, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is a promising alternative for enhancing the security of interconnected devices. A PUF produces an output in response to an input based on the physical structure and intrinsic manufacturing variations of an integrated circuit (IC). The generated random response being unpredictable, act as a robust secret key in cryptographic protocols. The first silicon PUF is the Arbiter PUF, which can instantly produce significantly more secret keys based on the input with a lightweight design. Due to its advantage, it is best suited for device authentication in resource-constrained applications employing the Internet of Things (IoT). The PUF is also suitable for applications such as the Internet of Vehicles, the Internet of Medical Things, RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, and smart cards. In this paper, the basic Arbiter PUF design is implemented in ZedBoard to analyze the PUF performance characteristics for 16, 32, and 64-bit responses. A review of Arbiter PUF design, different compositions of Arbiter PUF, their individual characteristics, and vulnerabilities against machine-learning attacks have been presented at their broader best in this paper.