Lightweight highly secure PUF protocol for mutual authentication and secret message exchange
PUFs or Physically Unclonable Functions are emerging hardware security primitives that offer a lightweight alternative to standard security for highly restricted devices like RFIDs. PUFs, however, have been found to be vulnerable to modeling attacks and as such PUF-based authentication protocols had to employ cryptographic primitives to establish reliable security. We introduce a novel lightweight, PUF-based protocol that offers unlimited number of highly secure mutual authentications and secret message exchanges while utilizing no cryptographic or hash functions. The protocol uses simple binary operations, a strong PUF circuit and a true random number generator to establish cryptography-strength security making it the first lightweight PUF-based protocol that can truly match cryptographic algorithms in terms of reliable security and unlimited authentications.