Is It Possible to Hide My Key into Deep Neural Network?

Abstract

The use of cryptographic functions has become vital for various devices, such as PCs, smart phones, drones, and smart appliances; however, the secure storage of cryptographic keys (or passwords) is a major issue. One way to securely store such a key is to register the key using secret data such as biometric data and then regenerate the key whenever it is needed. In this paper, we present a novel methodology for hiding cryptographic keys inside a deep neural network (DNN), and is termed as the DNN-based key hiding scheme. In this method, DNNs are constructed and trained with noisy data to hide the key within the network. To prove that our methodology works in practice, we propose an example of the DNN-based key hiding scheme and prove its correctness. For its robustness, we propose two basic security analysis tools to be able to check the example’s security. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt of its kind.