{"id":53,"date":"2016-03-22T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T09:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/konukoii.com\/blog\/?p=53"},"modified":"2016-03-28T18:46:45","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T18:46:45","slug":"physical-unclonable-functions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/konukoii.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/22\/physical-unclonable-functions\/","title":{"rendered":"Physical Unclonable Functions"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Last quarter I took my first grad class at UCSB called CS:290T \"Computational Algebra\". It was a very eclectic class where different speakers would come to lecture us on some aspect of their research. Needless to say, there were many interesting topics brought forth that ranged from Boolean Functions (on which I wrote a paper and will post later), distributed security, error tolerant functions, LLL Algorithm, etc. Among all of those, there was one that intrigued me quite a lot: Physical Unclonable Functions. What got me, is that the concept is easy to understand and the implementation can be done with virtually anything you want. So without further ado, lets take a plunge into the fascinating world of PUFs.<\/p>\n

1. Definition<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is a hardware implemented function\u00a0in which the mapping between a challenge and its response is dependent on the hardware variations\u00a0(eg. materials, electric params, design, etc.).<\/p>\n

For example, your PUF could rely on the time (in milliseconds) it takes for electricity to go through a wire. Although the wire is cut similarly in all computers, the small fluctuations in length might be enough for two computers to get different results. Now the trick is to choose a physical property that would vary greatly from machine to machine, but within the same computer the result doesn't change too much.<\/p>\n

2. Key Principles<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n