Toshiba announced that it developed a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) technology for solid-state authentication of IoT (Mono’s Internet) equipment.

We installed the developed technology on a self-propelled robot and confirmed that mutual authentication between the devices is possible.

The PUF uses physical differences (variations) of semiconductor chips as a chip index (ID). Because it is difficult to duplicate, it is a security technology that can be implemented with high safety at low cost. On the other hand, there are design restrictions such as the necessity to symmetrically arrange the wiring of the circuit, and there was also a problem in terms of mounting.

The PUF technology developed by Toshiba uses the initial output waveform of the oscillator circuit as ID. This technology has no constraint such as circuit symmetry like the conventional method. For this reason, it has become possible to easily install it in rewritable circuits such as FPGA. In addition, since it generates ID, there is no need to keep flowing current in the circuit, saving power consumption.

Toshiba mounted the developed PUF technology on a self-propelled robot and mutual authentication was carried out. In the demonstration experiment, FPGA with PUF mounted on the self-propelled robot’s parent machine and slave machine respectively. The slave unit transmits an ID based on a signal transmission command from the master unit. If the ID of the slave unit is registered in advance in the master unit, it is authenticated and the LED of the master unit is lit. In the demonstration experiment, it confirmed that mutual authentication between the devices is possible.