Strengthening Industrial IoT Security with Integrated PUF Token

In the ever-evolving landscape of IoT device security, safeguarding data with confidentiality and integrity stands as a paramount concern. This paper introduces an optimized approach to generate one time use keys tailored for IoT devices, emphasizing higher reliability, reduced latency, and improved security. By integrating post quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms and leveraging a zero knowledge proof system (ZKPS) alongside physical unclonable functions (PUFs), our protocol utilizes SRAM PUFs to produce secure cryptographic keys. Through optimizations, we reduced the error to 0 to 5 bits while generating a PUF based 384 bit long keys, while also reducing latencies below 100 ms, thereby enhancing key generation efficiency for Industrial IoTs. To validate the robustness of our system, extensive testing was conducted to evaluate false acceptance and rejection rates, bit error rate, inter and intra PUF hamming distance and latency of key recovery. Moreover, our protocol is enhanced by error correction code (ECC) that handle keys of various lengths in order to improve security. Additionally, addressing hardware size constraints, we propose an innovative approach to package, SRAM PUF into compact tokens that can be integrated in commercially available industrial IoT without compromising security. Some of the important technologies implemented in this work include the enrollment of the SRAM with at least 200 cycles, the masking of the unstable cells, and schemes to optimize memory cell selection that enhance entropy, randomness, and reproducibility. Leveraging inherent noise to augment key randomness and integrating PQC like CRYSTAL-KYBER, our protocol presents a comprehensive framework for robust IoT device security, proficiently balancing efficiency, reliability, and cryptographic strength in safeguarding sensitive data transmission.