Publication Details
Producing Unique Identifiers and Random Numbers on Basis of Unclonable Parameters of Microcontrollers and Undesired Effects
Conte Giuseppe
jitter, random number, unique identifier, generator
Main goal of this paper is to utilize component-of-the-shelf microcontrollers
(MCUs) to show how their unique and distinctive physical properties can be
utilized to enhance the security of embedded systems with no necessity to modify
the hardware for the purpose. It is shown in the paper that even if each MCU chip
is produced by the same procedure and technology, there are some slight changes
that make it being both unique and random in some sense. Almost 100k experiments
were performed to verify the concept proposed in the paper on more than 100 MCU
chips to show both simplicity and general applicability of our concept. During
the first set of about 50k experiments, same piece of a trivial code with no
middleware being utilized was executed on each MCU with the goal to produce its
unique identifier as well as a unique sequence of random numbers based on the
physical properties of that MCU. During the second set of experiments, the
production was repeated, but on basis of a real-time operating system layer to
observe impacts of the additional layer to results of the production process.
Freescale's MC9S08JM60 MCU and Micrium's uC/OS-II kernel was utilized during the
experiments.
@inproceedings{BUT111570,
author="Josef {Strnadel} and Giuseppe {Conte}",
title="Producing Unique Identifiers and Random Numbers on Basis of Unclonable Parameters of Microcontrollers and Undesired Effects",
booktitle="Proceedings of Electronic Devices and Systems IMAPS CS International Conference 2014",
year="2014",
pages="82--87",
publisher="Brno University of Technology",
address="Brno",
isbn="978-80-214-4985-5",
url="https://www.fit.vut.cz/research/publication/10605/"
}