Proof of Concept for IoT Device Authentication Based on SRAM PUFs Using ATMEGA 2560-MCU

The continuously rising amount of interconnected devices leads to many new attack vectors and cyber security threats. Secure and authentic communication is one of the fundamental needs of progress and development of new technologies. Therefore, new methods to verify the identity of participants in communication processes must be developed. We suggest different approaches for SRAM-based Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) deployment, such as Internet of Things (IoT)-device authentication or symmetric key cryptography (SKC). To obtain a reliable statement about the quality of the derived PUF, we applied some commonly used metrics like the entropy and correlated them with exterior influencing factors such as the environmental temperature or the supply voltage. We further show, that our approach and the examined parameters, provide a secure and reliable communication, based on a confidential, resource efficient and low-cost authentication method for IoT-devices which is enabled by usage of already given components, such as ATMEGA 2560 MCU internal SRAM-cells.