TY - GEN
T1 - Variable-length bit mapping and error-correcting codes for higher-order alphabet PUFs
AU - Immler, Vincent
AU - Hiller, Matthias
AU - Liu, Qinzhi
AU - Lenz, Andreas
AU - Wachter-Zeh, Antonia
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Device-specific physical characteristics provide the foundation for Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), a hardware primitive for secure storage of cryptographic keys. So far, they have been implemented by either directly evaluating a binary output or by mapping outputs from a higher-order alphabet to a fixed-length bit sequence. However, the latter causes a significant bias in the derived key when combined with an equidistant quantization. To overcome this limitation, we propose a variable-length bit mapping that reflects the properties of a Gray code in a different metric, namely the Levenshtein metric instead of the classical Hamming metric. Subsequent error-correction is therefore based on a custom insertion/deletion correcting code. This new approach effectively counteracts the bias in the derived key already at the input side. We present the concept for our scheme and demonstrate its feasibility based on an empirical PUF distribution. As a result, we increase the effective output bit length of the secret by over 40 % compared to state-of-the-art approaches while at the same time obtaining additional advantages, e.g., an improved tamper-sensitivity. This opens up a new direction of Error-Correcting Codes (ECCs) for PUFs that output responses with symbols of higher-order output alphabets.
AB - Device-specific physical characteristics provide the foundation for Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), a hardware primitive for secure storage of cryptographic keys. So far, they have been implemented by either directly evaluating a binary output or by mapping outputs from a higher-order alphabet to a fixed-length bit sequence. However, the latter causes a significant bias in the derived key when combined with an equidistant quantization. To overcome this limitation, we propose a variable-length bit mapping that reflects the properties of a Gray code in a different metric, namely the Levenshtein metric instead of the classical Hamming metric. Subsequent error-correction is therefore based on a custom insertion/deletion correcting code. This new approach effectively counteracts the bias in the derived key already at the input side. We present the concept for our scheme and demonstrate its feasibility based on an empirical PUF distribution. As a result, we increase the effective output bit length of the secret by over 40 % compared to state-of-the-art approaches while at the same time obtaining additional advantages, e.g., an improved tamper-sensitivity. This opens up a new direction of Error-Correcting Codes (ECCs) for PUFs that output responses with symbols of higher-order output alphabets.
KW - Coding theory
KW - Fuzzy extractor
KW - Physical unclonable functions
KW - Quantization
KW - Secrecy leakage
KW - Varshamov-tenengolts (VT) code
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85036463178
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-71501-8_11
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-71501-8_11
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85036463178
SN - 9783319715001
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 190
EP - 209
BT - Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering - 7th International Conference, SPACE 2017, Proceedings
A2 - Ali, Sk Subidh
A2 - Eisenbarth, Thomas
A2 - Danger, Jean-Luc
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 7th International Conference on Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering, SPACE 2017
Y2 - 13 December 2017 through 17 December 2017
ER -