A New Security Architecture for Smartcards Utilizing PUFs

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are functions embodied in physical structures which are easy to evaluate but hard to predict. Furthermore implementations are practically impossible to duplicate, even if the exact manufacturing process is known and available. As a consequence, security architectures based on PUFs promise inherent unclonability, physical tamper resistance and secure establishment of device-unique cryptographic keys. Well-known bare silicon PUFs aim at the security of the circuit itself but do not grant tamper resistance to the card in which it is embedded.