using SRAM state as a source of randomness

[Udhay Shankar N]

Sounds like an interesting idea - using SRAM state as a source of 
randomness. Any of the folks here willing to comment on this?

Udhay

http://prisms.cs.umass.edu/~kevinfu/papers/holcomb-FERNS-RFIDSec07.pdf

Initial SRAM State as a Fingerprint and Source
of True Random Numbers for RFID Tags

Daniel E. Holcomb, Wayne P. Burleson, and Kevin Fu
University of Massachusetts, Amherst MA 01002, USA,
{dholcomb, burleson}@ecs.umass.edu, kevinfu at cs.umass.edu
http://www.rfid-cusp.org/

Abstract.

RFID applications create a need for low-cost security and
privacy in potentially hostile environments. Our measurements show
that initialization of SRAM produces a physical fingerprint. We propose
a system of Fingerprint Extraction and Random Numbers in SRAM
(FERNS) that harvests static identity and randomness from existing
volatileCMOSstorage.Theidentityresultsfrommanufacture-timephys-
icallyrandomdevicethresholdmismatch,andtherandomnumbersresult
from run-time physically random noise. We use experimental data from
virtual tags, microcontroller memory, and the WISP UHF RFID tag to
validate the principles behind FERNS. We show that a 256byte SRAM
can be used to identify circuits among a population of 160 virtual tags,
and can potentially produce 128bit random numbers capable of passing
cryptographic statistical tests.


-- 
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

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