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A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a novel technique that allows Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to produce more secure, unique ‘fingerprint’ outputs at a very low cost. This achievement enhances the level of hardware security even in low-end systems on chips.

Traditionally, PUFs are embedded in several commercial chips to uniquely distinguish one from another by generating a secret key, similar to an individual fingerprint. Such a technology prevents hardware piracy, chip counterfeiting and physical attacks.

The research team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the NUS Faculty of Engineering has taken silicon chip fingerprinting to the next level with two significant improvements: firstly, making PUFs self-healing; and secondly, enabling them to self-conceal.

The two are worlds apart – and that’s a big problem when it comes to recruitment and retainment. On one side is the need to protect American citizens and data from cyber attackers looking to disrupt our way of life by keeping networks and access locked away in a building. On the other side is the best and brightest talent that will bring innovative solutions to our nation’s defense and security organizations who expect flexible remote access – and can easily find it in the private sector.

To maintain our status as a global world power and stay one step ahead of our adversaries, we are going to have to find a balance between the two. To do that, the way we work across the DoD and IC must change.

The Federal government understands the significance of remote access on meeting mission objectives now and in the future. Agency leaders are looking to the private sector for technology that helps them maintain the highest security levels while meeting the ease-of-access demands of today’s worker – and can be implemented quickly. To support this, the National Security Agency developed the Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program.

As the amount of data stored in devices and shared over the internet continuously increases, computer scientists worldwide are trying to devise new approaches to secure communications and protect sensitive information. Some of the most well-established and valuable approaches are cryptographic techniques, which essentially encrypt (i.e., transform) data and texts exchanged between two or more parties, so that only senders and receivers can view it in its original form.

Physical unclonable functions (PUFs), devices that exploit “random imperfections” unavoidably introduced during the manufacturing of devices to give physical entities unique “fingerprints” (i.e., trust anchors). In recent years, these devices have proved to be particularly valuable for creating , which are instantly erased as soon as they are used.

Researchers at Peking University and Jihua Laboratory have recently introduced a new system to generate cryptographic primitives, consisting of two identical PUFs based on aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays. This system, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, could help to secure communications more reliably, overcoming some of the vulnerabilities of previously proposed PUF devices.

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David Brin is a scientist, speaker, technical consultant and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards.
A 1998 movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on his book The Postman.
His Ph.D in Physics from UCSD — followed a masters in optics and an undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Caltech. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Space Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI and nanotechnology, future/prediction and philanthropy. He has served since 2010 on the council of external advisers for NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts group (NIAC), which supports the most inventive and potentially ground-breaking new endeavors.

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