Ope, Inc.

Andrey Bogdanov

Joshua Norman Smith

Robert Chad McCollum

A data security apparatus has an analog component and control circuitry. The control circuitry receives an incoming digital message and converts it to or from encrypted form using the analog component. The control circuitry drives the analog component with drive signals and receives back a digital representation of what the analog component's sensor outputs. It uses this in making a digital keystream. In operation, the control circuitry makes the drive signals by encrypting a nonce-based value with a key. It can encrypt the digital representation of the sensor outputs that resulted from the drive signal, with the same key. The control circuitry also can also encrypt the nonce-based value with a different key, and then combine this with the encrypted sensor output to generate the digital keystream that is uses in the conversion.

Control circuitry for data security apparatus

A data security apparatus includes an analog component. The analog component operates internally with a high degree of entropy. This high degree of entropy resides in the interactions between its internal components in response to an external driving signal. The interactions within the analog component have a level of entropy that is high enough to make digital simulation of the analog component impractical. Because the analog component is impractical to digitally simulate it is referred to as being digitally unclonable. The data security apparatus processes data by encrypting plaintext data into ciphertext and/or decrypting data from ciphertext into plaintext. Part of the conversion between plaintext and ciphertext uses the analog component. Since the analog component is digitally unclonable (that is, impractical to digitally simulate), the part of the conversion process that uses the analog component requires possession of the analog component itself or the possession of another analog component that has the same signature.

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Copenhagen, Denmark

Andrey Bogdanov