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Cryptography with Analog Scheme Using Memristors

Published: 15 September 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Networks of low-power Internet of Things do not have always access to enough computing power to support mainstream cryptographic schemes; such schemes also consume computing power that can be exposed to side channel attacks. This article describes a method, that we call “cryptography with analog scheme using memristors,” leveraging the physical properties of memristors, which are active elements suitable for the design of components such as artificial neurons. The proposed devices encrypt messages by segmenting them into blocks of bits, each modulating the injected currents into randomly selected memristor cells, resulting into sets of resistance values turned into cipher texts. Through hash-protected handshakes, identical addresses are independently generated by both communicating devices, to concurrently point at the same set of cells in the arrays, and their images. These block ciphers, for example, 1 KB long, can only be decrypted with the same memristor array driven by analog circuitry or its image, rather than digital key-based schemes. The proposed methods generate cipher text, and decrypt them, with approximately one femto joule per bit, which is below observable level through differential power analysis. The article explains how the use of different cells for each message to encrypt, driven under different conditions, has the potential to mitigate mainstream attacks. It provides a detailed characterization of memristors to evaluate the feasibility of the approach and discusses some hardware and architectures to implement the scheme.

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Published In

cover image ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems
ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems  Volume 16, Issue 4
Special Issue on Nanoelectronic Device, Circuit, Architecture Design, Part 2 and Regular Papers
October 2020
202 pages
ISSN:1550-4832
EISSN:1550-4840
DOI:10.1145/3418801
  • Editor:
  • Ramesh Karri
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 15 September 2020
Accepted: 01 July 2020
Revised: 01 June 2020
Received: 01 May 2019
Published in JETC Volume 16, Issue 4

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Author Tags

  1. Arrays of memristors
  2. analysis and design of emerging devices and systems
  3. dissolvable filaments
  4. hardware-based security protocols

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  • (2024)Current sensor fingerprint for real-time failure detection and transceiver identification in autonomous systems controlled by artificial intelligence (AI)Autonomous Systems: Sensors, Processing, and Security for Ground, Air, Sea, and Space Vehicles and Infrastructure 202410.1117/12.3011855(1)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Analysis of Memristor Neural Networks for fault Tolerant Computing2024 International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Communication Systems (ICKECS)10.1109/ICKECS61492.2024.10617381(1-8)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2024
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  • (2022)Bit Error Rate Analysis of Pre-formed ReRAM-based PUFIntelligent Computing10.1007/978-3-031-10467-1_54(882-901)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
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