Secure authentication with high-entropy silicon physical unclonable functions

The innovation idea of the AuthentIC project is an authentication solution for anticounterfeiting of goods based on proprietary silicon integrated circuits implementing high-entropy physical unclonable functions (PUFs). The demonstration of such solution is the main objective of the project.

PUFs are silicon integrated circuits that leverage random variations due to fabrication tolerances to implement a unique function that is unknown to the observer and the manufacturer, and extremely difficult to measure experimentally.

From a behavioural viewpoint, PUFs are circuits that respond to digital input strings (challenges) with digital output strings (responses), where the challenge-response mapping (the unclonable function) is fully repeatable with aging and with varying environmental conditions.

To make PUFs resilient to AI-based attacks and to brute force attacks, it is imperative to design and fabricate high-entropy PUFs, as we plan to do in AuthentIC.

The PUF chips are then packaged in NFC transponders (AuthentIC labels), either mounted on flexible RFID labels with a printed antenna (e.g. for luxury goods) or embedded in a credit-card sized transponder (e.g. for a wearable access badge).In the actual use of the AuthentIC solution, the authenticity of an object to which an AuthentIC label is attached can be verified by using a standard smartphone, through the NFC interface.

An app on the smartphone will receive a challenge from a TA and forward it to the PUF. It will then receive the response and forward it to the TA for validation.

Through the AuthentIC project, we pursue a product innovation consisting in the offering of a complete authentication solution based on high-entropy silicon PUFs.