Poster: making the case for intrinsic personal physical unclonable functions (IP-PUFs)

Abstract

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are physical systems whose responses to input stimuli (i.e., challenges) are easy to measure but difficult to clone. The unclonability property is due to the accepted hardness of replicating the multitude of uncontrollable manufacturing characteristics and makes PUFs useful in solving problems such as authentication, software protection/licensing, and certified execution. In this abstract, we claim that any multi-core computer is usable as a timing-PUF and can be measured via simple benchmarking tools (i.e., no specialized hardware required). We investigate several characterstics of standard off-the-shelf computers and present initial experimental results justifying our claim. Additionally, we argue that PUFs which are intrinsically involved in computations over sensitive data are preferable to peripheral device PUFs -- especially for intellectual property protection and continuous device authentication.