Northern Arizona University

USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Julie B Heynssens

Bertrand Francis Cambou

Ian Burke

H Shelton Jacinto

Donald A Telesca

Taylor Begay

Brit Riggs

Manuel Aguilar Rios

Jack Garrard

Systems and methods for the generation and use of session keys supporting secure communications between a client and server device are disclosed. The client hashes each of a series of passwords a first number of times. The hashed passwords are sent to a server. The server applies the hashed password to an array of PUF devices, and receives an initial response bitstream which is stored. The client later hashes each of the series of passwords a second number of times, which is less than the first number, and these are sent to the server. The server continues to hash the second message digest, generate PUF responses, and compare the result to the initially stored responses. For each password, the number of hashes necessary to achieve a match is a partial session key. Latency is improved by an array of separately addressable PUFs, each producing a partial session key.

Associative PUF arrays to generate session keys with pseudo-homomorphic methods

An arrangement and method for detecting number splitting attacks in quantum key distribution systems is disclosed. According to the method, a receiver may detect the presence of an eavesdropper on a transmission channel by detecting an increase in the percent difference between the photon transmission rates of two signals of different wavelengths. The receiver may directly measure a percent difference in photon receive rates as between the two signals, and compare the measured difference with an expected difference. The expected difference may be known, or may be measured by the receiver on the basis of historical data. The expected difference may be computed from the percent difference between the means of the Poisson distributions of the transmitter's laser sources, which may be determined a priori and communicated to the transmitter.

Multi-wavelength quantum key distribution for enhanced security against a photon number splitting attack and higher data rates

A system and method of secure communication between computing devices based on physical unclonable functions such as memories having dissolvable conductive paths is provided. The method involves enrolling a client device, the client device having a PUF such as a pristine ReRAM. The PUF is enrolled in a secure environment by reading and storing the resistances of the PUF's addressable memory cells. The cells are categorized into 'rugged' and 'vulnerable' categories on the basis of their resistance, the vulnerable cells being those more likely to be permanently altered during the generations of PUF responses. The rugged cells are used for the generation of PUF responses for cryptographic key generation, but the vulnerable cells may be inspected to detect unauthorized 3rd party access to the PUF.

Sensing scheme for low power reram-based physical unclonable functions

Growing community of inventors

Flagstaff, AZ, United States of America

Julie B Heynssens