Abstract
Physical unclonable functions are the physical equivalent of one-way mathematical transformations that, upon external excitation, can generate irreversible responses. Exceeding their mathematical counterparts, their inherent physical complexity renders them resilient to cloning and reverse engineering. When these features are combined with their time-invariant and deterministic operation, the necessity to store the responses (keys) in non-volatile means can be alleviated. This pivotal feature, makes them critical components for a wide range of cryptographic-authentication applications, where sensitive data storage is restricted. In this work, a physical unclonable function based on a single optical waveguide is experimentally and numerically validated. The system’s responses consist of speckle-like images that stem from mode-mixing and scattering events of multiple guided transverse modes. The proposed configuration enables the system’s response to be simultaneously governed by multiple physical scrambling mechanisms, thus offering a radical performance enhancement in terms of physical unclonability compared to conventional optical implementations. Additional features like physical re-configurability, render our scheme suitable for demanding authentication applications.
Highlights
Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) have received considerable attention, due to unique security features related to their physical complexity[1]
The spotlight of attention has been mainly focused on silicon - cast PUFs, whose principle of operation is based on exploiting uncontrollable variations in operational parameters[2,3,4,5,6,7,9]
The proposed PUF is an extension of conventional optical approaches, and can be used under similar operational modes, here we focus on the physical uniqueness of our device that acts as an authentication token
Summary
Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) have received considerable attention, due to unique security features related to their physical complexity[1]. Existing implementations include ring-oscillators[9,10,11], arbiter PUFs12,13, static random access memory (SRAM) PUFs14,15, resistive random access memory (RRAMs)[16,17], XOR-Arbiters[18], and imaging CMOS PUFs19,20 Despite their merits in terms of integration[21], unclonability, and robustness[22,23,24], the underlying physical scrambling mechanism, in most cases, is rather simplistic, resulting to enhanced vulnerability to modelling attacks[25,26,27]. The corresponding existing schemes, employ transparent tokens containing randomly micro-structures[1,36], laser-engraved samples[37], or sheets of regular paper[38] Their security is based on the complexity of the underlying physical mechanism where a modelling attack would require the division of the token into wavelength sized voxels and solving Maxwell’s equations for each possible arrangement[36]. In the vast majority of optical PUFs, this vulnerability stems from the linearity of the scattering process[36]
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