CCF: SHF: CORE: Small: Towards Systematic Quality Control of Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs)

CCF：SHF：CORE：小型：迈向物理不可克隆功能（PUF）的系统质量控制

基本信息

批准号：
2244479
负责人：
Natasha Devroye
金额：
$ 59.95万
依托单位：
University of Illinois at Chicago
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2023
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2023-01-15 至 2025-12-31
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2244479&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
CCF SHF CORE Small Towards

项目摘要

Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are relatively new devices, often electronic, currently being designed and investigated for potential use as hardware security primitives for various security applications. Electronic PUFs work by exploiting some inherent randomness in the chip manufacturing process, which produces analog features with slight random variations that are combined to yield a digital function. This randomness, usually considered undesirable in traditional chip manufacturing processes, here is harnessed and, when coupled with an analog-to-digital process, realizes a "challenge-to-response" Boolean function. The hope is that each device's list of challenge-response-pairs (CRPs) is unique and hence may be used in security applications such as device identification, authentication, and on-demand cryptographic key generation. Strong PUFs promise a huge CRP space exponential in hardware size and hence able to generate, on demand, many and/or very long keys with minimal hardware throughout a device's lifespan. Despite the appeal of strong PUFs, few commercial realizations exist. To enable this, both 1) how to properly manufacture and test strong PUFs, and 2), once fabricated and tested, how to properly integrate such devices into security protocols need to be addressed. The latter is well studied; this award’s research will focus on the relatively unexplored former question. In this project, which brings together two faculty in complementary areas (statistics / information theory and electronic design automation / hardware security), the team will develop a systematic framework for the testing, diagnosing, repairing, and strengthening of strong PUFs. They will train undergraduate and Ph.D. students in testing and verification of hardware security primitives -- engineers with a deep understanding of this new area are indispensable for future trusted IC design and verification teams in the US. This research departs significantly from existing work on PUFs which has largely focused on either proposing new PUFs and evaluating their properties, or on security attacks / defenses of PUF-based protocols. Looking towards a future with ramped up domestic chip fabrication, the investigators focus on what would be needed to bring the promise of PUFs to fruition through: 1) developing new statistical, native fault models for PUF instances, PUF-production lines, and PUF-aging processes; 2) devising testing and diagnosing techniques able to quickly and accurately identify such faults. This could be fed back to electronic design automation tools to iteratively enhance PUF quality control. This differs markedly from existing testing techniques which test chips against a golden behavior. The investigators will also develop techniques to repair faulty, aging, or unreliable PUFs through challenge selection, which may be incorporated into PUF protocols. This line of work represents a careful and statistically motivated exploitation of the largely overlooked huge challenge space of strong PUFs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

物理不可克隆功能 (PUF) 是相对较新的设备，通常是电子设备，目前正在设计和研究其潜在用途，作为各种安全应用的硬件安全原语。电子 PUF 通过利用芯片制造过程中的一些固有随机性来工作，从而产生模拟功能。轻微的随机变化组合起来产生数字函数，这种随机性在传统芯片制造工艺中通常被认为是不受欢迎的，但这里利用了这种随机性，并且当与模拟到数字工艺相结合时，实现了“质询响应”布尔函数希望每个设备的质询响应对 (CRP) 列表都是唯一的，因此可用于设备识别、身份验证和按需加密密钥生成等安全应用。强大的 PUF 保证了硬件大小的巨大 CRP 空间指数，因此能够在设备的整个生命周期中以最少的硬件按需生成许多和/或非常长的密钥，尽管强大的吸引力。 PUF 的商业实现很少，需要解决 1) 如何正确制造和测试强大的 PUF，以及 2) 一旦制造和测试，如何将此类设备正确集成到安全协议中。研究；该奖项的研究将集中在相对未探索的前一个问题上，该项目汇集了互补领域（统计/信息论和电子设计自动化/硬件安全）的两名教师，团队将开发一个系统的测试框架。 ,他们将培训本科生和博士生进行硬件安全原语的测试和验证——对这一新领域有深入了解的工程师对于未来值得信赖的 IC 设计和验证团队来说是不可或缺的。这项研究与 PUF 的现有工作有很大不同，现有的 PUF 工作主要集中于提出新的 PUF 并评估其特性，或基于 PUF 的协议的安全攻击/防御，展望未来国内芯片的发展。在制造过程中，研究人员重点关注通过以下方式实现 PUF 的承诺所需的内容：1) 为 PUF 实例、PUF 生产线和 PUF 老化流程开发新的统计、本地故障模型；2) 设计测试和诊断；能够快速准确地识别此类故障的技术可以反馈给电子设计自动化工具，以迭代地增强 PUF 质量控制，这与针对黄金行为测试芯片的现有测试技术明显不同。开发通过挑战选择来修复有缺陷、老化或不可靠的 PUF 的技术，这些技术可以纳入 PUF 协议中。这一工作代表了对强 PUF 的巨大挑战空间的谨慎和经济动机的开发。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定规定。使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。