Attacks on Lightweight Hardware-Based Security Primitives

TL;DR

This paper surveys recent attacks on lightweight hardware security primitives, especially PUFs and TRNGs, analyzing their vulnerabilities to promote the development of more secure data protection methods.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of attack methods on LHSPs, highlighting vulnerabilities and encouraging new countermeasures for hardware-based security.

Findings

Identification of key vulnerabilities in PUFs and TRNGs

Analysis of attack techniques compromising LHSPs

Recommendations for enhancing security resilience

Abstract

In today's digital age, the ease of data collection, transfer, and storage continue to shape modern society and the ways we interact with our world. The advantages are numerous, but there is also an increased risk of information unintentionally falling into the wrong hands. Finding methods of protecting sensitive information at the hardware level is of utmost importance, and in this paper, we aim to provide a survey on recent developments in attacks on lightweight hardware-based security primitives (LHSPs) designed to do just that. Specifically, we provide an analysis of the attack resilience of these proposed LHSPs in an attempt to bring awareness to any vulnerabilities that may exist. We do this in the hope that it will encourage the continued development of attack countermeasures as well as completely new methods of data protection in order to prevent the discussed methods of attack from remaining viable in the future. The types of LHSPs discussed include physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and true random number generators (TRNGs), with a primary emphasis placed on PUFs.