Unequally powered cryptography with physical unclonable functions for networks of internet of things terminals

In this paper, cryptographic architectures based on unequal computing resources are modelled, and experimentally verified with Window-10 PCs powered with Intel I-7 processor. Low power IoT terminal devices generate keys from physical unclonable functions, which can be recognized by the server through a matching engine. We are here proposing methods to modulate the efficiency of the matching engine by injecting erratic bits in the keys, and/or by fragmenting the keys in smaller sub-keys. When the environment is hostile, the difficulty in matching the keys can be adjusted in such a way that the server needs access to increasingly powerful computing power to recognize the terminal device thereby placing attackers with inferior computing power at a strong disadvantage. The objective of this research work is to find, through the modelling effort, the conditions where unequally powered cryptography can take advantage of high performance computers to protect networks of IoT terminals.