# A Proof of Concept SRAM-based Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) Key Generation Mechanism for IoT Devices

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a proof of concept for SRAM-based PUFs to generate secure keys for IoT devices, using custom hardware and error correction to improve stability and security.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel SRAM PUF key generation method with adjustable error rates and fuzzy extractor techniques for IoT security.

## Key findings

- Stable key extraction from SRAM PUFs achieved
- Error correction methods effectively reduce false rates
- Custom hardware enables on-demand fingerprint extraction

## Abstract

This paper provides a proof of concept for using SRAM based Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to generate private keys for IoT devices. PUFs are utilized, as there is inadequate protection for secret keys stored in the memory of the IoT devices. We utilize a custom-made Arduino mega shield to extract the fingerprint from SRAM chip on demand. We utilize the concepts of ternary states to exclude the cells which are easily prone to flip, allowing us to extract stable bits from the fingerprint of the SRAM. Using the custom-made software for our SRAM device, we can control the error rate of the PUF to achieve an adjustable memory-based PUF for key generation. We utilize several fuzzy extractor techniques based on using different error correction coding methods to generate secret keys from the SRAM PUF, and study the trade-off between the false authentication rate and false rejection rate of the PUF.