Strong Authentication with Physical Unclonable Functions

Abstract

Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) can be used as a cost-effectivemeans to store cryptographic key material in an unclonable way. Theycan be employed for strong authentication of objects, e.g., tokens,and of persons possessing such tokens, but also for other purposes.We give a short overview of security applications where PUFs areuseful, and discuss physical realisations, noisy measurements andinformation content of PUFs. Then we describe an integrated authenticationtoken containing an optical PUF, a challenging mechanism and a detector.Finally, we discuss authentication protocols for controlled and uncontrolledPUFs.