Lightweight PUF-Based Gate Replacement Technique to Reduce Leakage of Information through Power Profile Analysis

The major challenge faced by electronic device designers is to defend the system from attackers and malicious modules called Hardware Trojans and to deliver a secured design. Although there are many cryptographic preventive measures in place adversaries find different ways to attack the device. Differential Power Analysis (DPA) attack is a type of Side Channel Attacks, used by an attacker to analyze the power leakage in the circuit, through which the functionality of the circuit is extracted. To overcome this, a lightweight approach is proposed in this paper using, Wave Dynamic Differential Logic (WDDL) technique, without incurring any additional resource cost and power. The primary objective of WDDL is to make the power consumption constant of an entire circuit by restricting the leakage power. The alternate strategy used by an adversary is to leak the information through reverse engineering. The proposed work avoids this by using a bit sequencer and a modified butterfly PUF based randomizing architecture. A modified version of butterfly PUF is also proposed in this paper, and from various qualitative tests performed it is evident that this PUF can prevent information leakage. This work is validated on ISCAS 85, ISCAS 89 benchmark circuits and the results obtained indicate that the difference in leakage power is found to be very marginal

A Low-Cost Unified Experimental FPGA Board for Cryptography Applications

This paper describes the evaluation of available experimental boards, the comparison of their supported set of experiments and other aspects. The second part of this evaluation is focused on the design process of the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) for an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based cryptography environment suitable for evaluating the latest trends in the IC (Integrated Circuit) security like Side–Channel Attacks (SCA) or Physically Unclonable Function (PUF). It leads to many criteria affecting the design process and also the suitability for evaluating and measuring results of the attacks and their countermeasures. The developed system should be open, versatile and unrestricted by the U.S. law [1]

Modélisation et caractérisation des fonctions non clonables physiquement

Physically Unclonable Functions, or PUFs, are innovative technologies devoted to solve some security and identification issues. Similarly to a human fingerprint, PUFs allows to identify uniquely electronic devices as they produce an instance-specific signature. Applications as authentication or key generation can take advantage of this embedded function. The main property that we try to obtain from a PUF is the generation of a unique response that varies randomly from one physical device to another without allowing its prediction. Another important property of these PUF is to always reproduce the same response for the same input challenge even in a changing environment. Moreover, the PUF system should be secure against attacks that could reveal its response. In this thesis, we are interested in silicon PUF which take advantage of inherent process variations during the manufacturing of CMOS integrated circuits. We present several PUF constructions, discuss their properties and the implementation techniques to use them in security applications. We first present two novel PUF structures. The first one, called “Loop PUF” is a delay based PUF which relies on the comparison of delay measurements of identical serial delay chains. The major contribution brought by the use of this structure is its implementation simplicity on both ASIC and FPGA platforms, and its flexibility as it can be used for reliable authentication or key generation. The second proposed structure is a ring-oscillator based PUF cells “TERO PUF”. It exploits the oscillatory metastability of cross-coupled elements, and can also be used as True Random Number Generator (TRNG). More precisely, the PUF response takes advantage from the introduced oscillatory metastability of an SR flip-flop when the S and R inputs are connected to the same input signal. Experimental results show the high performance of these two proposed PUF structures. Second, in order to fairly compare the quality of different delay based PUFs, we propose a specific characterization method. It is based on statistical measurements on basic delay elements. The main benefit of this method is that it allows the designer to be sure that the PUF will meet the expected performances before its implementation and fabrication. Finally, Based on the unclonability and unpredictability properties of the PUFs, we present new techniques to perform “loop PUF” authentication and cryptographic key generation. Theoretical and experimental results show the efficiency of the introduced techniques in terms of complexity and reliabilityLes fonctions non clonables physiquement, appelées PUF (Physically Unclonable Functions), représentent une technologie innovante qui permet de résoudre certains problèmes de sécurité et d’identification. Comme pour les empreintes humaines, les PUF permettent de différencier des circuits électroniques car chaque exemplaire produit une signature unique. Ces fonctions peuvent être utilisées pour des applications telles que l’authentification et la génération de clés cryptographiques. La propriété principale que l’on cherche à obtenir avec les PUF est la génération d’une réponse unique qui varie de façon aléatoire d’un circuit à un autre, sans la possibilité de la prédire. Une autre propriété de ces PUF est de toujours reproduire, quel que soit la variation de l’environnement de test, la même réponse à un même défi d’entrée. En plus, une fonction PUF doit être sécurisée contre les attaques qui permettraient de révéler sa réponse. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons aux PUF en silicium profitant des variations inhérentes aux technologies de fabrication des circuits intégrés CMOS. Nous présentons les principales architectures de PUF, leurs propriétés, et les techniques mises en œuvre pour les utiliser dans des applications de sécurité. Nous présentons d’abord deux nouvelles structures de PUF. La première structure appelée “Loop PUF” est basée sur des chaînes d’éléments à retard contrôlés. Elle consiste à comparer les délais de chaînes à retard identiques qui sont mises en série. Les points forts de cette structure sont la facilité de sa mise en œuvre sur les deux plates-formes ASIC et FPGA, la grande flexibilité pour l’authentification des circuits intégrés ainsi que la génération de clés de chiffrement. La deuxième structure proposée “TERO PUF” est basée sur le principe de cellules temporairement oscillantes. Elle exploite la métastabilité oscillatoire d’éléments couplés en croix, et peut aussi être utilisée pour un générateur vrai d’aléas (TRNG). Plus précisément, la réponse du PUF profite de la métastabilité oscillatoire introduite par une bascule SR lorsque les deux entrées S et R sont connectées au même signal d’entrée. Les résultats expérimentaux montrent le niveau de performances élevé des deux structures de PUF proposées. Ensuite, afin de comparer équitablement la qualité des différentes PUF à retard, nous proposons une méthode de caractérisation spécifique. Elle est basée sur des mesures statistiques des éléments à retard. Le principal avantage de cette méthode vient de sa capacité à permettre au concepteur d’être sûr que la fonction PUF aura les performances attendues avant sa mise en œuvre et sa fabrication. Enfin, en se basant sur les propriétés de non clonabilité et de l’imprévisibilité des PUF, nous présentons de nouvelles techniques d’authentification et de génération de clés de chiffrement en utilisant la “loop PUF” proposée. Les résultats théoriques et expérimentaux montrent l’efficacité des techniques introduites en termes de complexité et de fiabilit

Uniquely Identifiable Tamper-Evident Device Using Coupling between Subwavelength Gratings

Reliability and sensitive information protection are critical aspects of integrated circuits. A novel technique using near-field evanescent wave coupling from two subwavelength gratings (SWGs), with the input laser source delivered through an optical fiber is presented for tamper evidence of electronic components. The first grating of the pair of coupled subwavelength gratings (CSWGs) was milled directly on the output facet of the silica fiber using focused ion beam (FIB) etching. The second grating was patterned using e-beam lithography and etched into a glass substrate using reactive ion etching (RIE). The slightest intrusion attempt would separate the CSWGs and eliminate near-field coupling between the gratings. Tampering, therefore, would become evident. Computer simulations guided the design for optimal operation of the security solution. The physical dimensions of the SWGs, i.e. period and thickness, were optimized, for a 650 nm illuminating wavelength. The optimal dimensions resulted in a 560 nm grating period for the first grating etched in the silica optical fiber and 420 nm for the second grating etched in borosilicate glass. The incident light beam had a half-width at half-maximum (HWHM) of at least 7 µm to allow discernible higher transmission orders, and a HWHM of 28 µm for minimum noise. The minimum number of individual grating lines present on the optical fiber facet was identified as 15 lines. Grating rotation due to the cylindrical geometry of the fiber resulted in a rotation of the far-field pattern, corresponding to the rotation angle of moiré fringes. With the goal of later adding authentication to tamper evidence, the concept of CSWGs signature was also modeled by introducing random and planned variations in the glass grating. The fiber was placed on a stage supported by a nanomanipulator, which permitted three-dimensional displacement while maintaining the fiber tip normal to the surface of the glass substrate. A 650 nm diode laser was fixed to a translation mount that transmitted the light source through the optical fiber, and the output intensity was measured using a silicon photodiode. The evanescent wave coupling output results for the CSWGs were measured and compared to the simulation results