Physical unclonable functions: devices for cryptostorage

Abstract

The concept of the Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is exhaustively characerised as an information storage device with a security mechanism that shall impede the duplication of its specified functionality and that is indivisible from its storage mechanism. Thereby, in analogy to cryptography (security mechanisms indivisible from the writing), PUF research and development is identified as the new security-engineering discipline of "cryptostorage". Previous PUF architectures are shown to conform to this framework. A preliminary classification scheme to organize future research and security evaluation of PUF-like primitives is developed.