{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,16]],"date-time":"2026-05-16T16:09:54Z","timestamp":1778947794284,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":26,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,1]],"date-time":"2018-06-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1527811200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["61376026"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["61376026"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are some of the most popular PUFs that provide a highly-secured solution for secret key storage. Given that PUF responses are noisy, the key reconstruction must use error correcting code (ECC) to reduce the noise. Repetition code is widely used in resource constrained systems as it is concise and lightweight, however, research has shown that repetition codes can lead to information leakage. In this paper we found that the strongest cell distribution in a SRAM array may leak information of the responses of SRAM PUF when the repetition code is directly applied. Experimentally, on an ASIC platform with the HHGRACE 0.13 \u03bcm process, we recovered 8.3% of the measured response using the strongest cells revealed by the helper data, and we finally obtained a clone response 79% similar to weak response using the public helper data. We therefore propose Error Resistant Fuzzy Extractor (ERFE), a 4-bit error tolerant fuzzy extractor, that extracts the value of the sum of the responses as a unique key and reduces the failure rate to 1.8 \u00d7 10\u22128 with 256 bit entropy.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s18061776","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,4]],"date-time":"2018-06-04T08:59:41Z","timestamp":1528102781000},"page":"1776","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Pitfall of the Strongest Cells in Static Random Access Memory Physical Unclonable Functions"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"18","author":[{"given":"Mingyang","family":"Gong","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Hailong","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Run","family":"Min","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zhenglin","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"48","DOI":"10.1016\/J.ENG.2016.01.014","article-title":"Insecurity by Design: Today\u2019s IoT Device Security Problem","volume":"2","year":"2016","journal-title":"Engineering"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"146","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2014.11.008","article-title":"Security, privacy and trust in Internet of Things: The road ahead","volume":"76","author":"Sicari","year":"2015","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1143","DOI":"10.1109\/TCAD.2015.2424955","article-title":"A low-power hybrid RO PUF with improved thermal stability for lightweight applications","volume":"34","author":"Cao","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Comput.-Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Cherkaoui, A., Bossuet, L., Seitz, L., Selander, G., and Borgaonkar, R. (2014, January 26\u201328). New paradigms for access control in constrained environments. Proceedings of the 2014 9th International Symposium on Reconfigurable and Communication-Centric Systems-on-Chip (ReCoSoC), Montpellier, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/ReCoSoC.2014.6861362"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2026","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1074376","article-title":"Physical one-way functions","volume":"297","author":"Pappu","year":"2002","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"Lee, J.W., Lim, D., Gassend, B., Suh, G., Dijk, M.V., and Devadas, S. (2004, January 17\u201319). A technique to build a secret key in integrated circuits for identification and authentication applications. Proceedings of the 2004 Symposium on VLSI Circuits. Digest of Technical Papers (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37525), Honolulu, HI, USA."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lu, Z., Li, D., Liu, H., Gong, M., and Liu, Z. (2017). An Anti-Electromagnetic Attack PUF Based on a Configurable Ring Oscillator for Wireless Sensor Networks. Sensors, 17.","DOI":"10.3390\/s17092118"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1198","DOI":"10.1109\/TC.2008.212","article-title":"Power-up SRAM state as an identifying fingerprint and source of true random numbers","volume":"58","author":"Holcomb","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Comput."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kumar, S.S., Guajardo, J., Maes, R., Schrijen, G.J., and Tuyls, P. (2008, January 9). The butterfly PUF protecting IP on every FPGA. Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Workshop on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust, Anaheim, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2008.4559053"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"11542","DOI":"10.3390\/s140711542","article-title":"A Trustworthy Key Generation Prototype Based on DDR3 PUF for Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"14","author":"Liu","year":"2014","journal-title":"Sensors"},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"(2018, March 30). Microsemi and Intrinsic-ID Deliver Integrated Security Solutions for Government Applications. Available online: https:\/\/www.intrinsic-id.com\/microsemi-and-intrinsic-id-deliver-integrated-security-solutions-for-government-applications-2."},{"key":"ref_12","unstructured":"Intrinsic-ID (2018, March 30). NXP Strengthens SmartMX2 Security Chips with PUF Anti-Cloning Technology. Available online: https:\/\/www.intrinsic-id.com\/nxp-strengthens-smartmx2-security-chips-with-puf-anti-cloning-technology."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Dodis, Y., Reyzin, L., and Smith, A. (2004). Fuzzy extractors: How to generate strong keys from biometrics and other noisy data. International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-24676-3_31"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"B\u00f6sch, C., Guajardo, J., Sadeghi, A.R., Shokrollahi, J., and Tuyls, P. (2008). Efficient Helper Data Key Extractor on FPGAs. International Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-85053-3_12"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Koeberl, P., Li, J., Rajan, A., and Wu, W. (2014, January 6\u20137). Entropy loss in PUF-based key generation schemes: The repetition code pitfall. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), Arlington, VA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2014.6855566"},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"Van Herrewege, A. (2015). Lightweight PUF-based Key and Random Number Generation. [Ph.D. Thesis, KU Leuven]."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"R\u00fchrmair, U., Busch, H., and Katzenbeisser, S. (2010). Strong PUFs: Models, constructions, and security proofs. Towards Hardware-Intrinsic Security, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-14452-3_4"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1077","DOI":"10.1002\/cpe.805","article-title":"Identification and authentication of integrated circuits","volume":"16","author":"Gassend","year":"2004","journal-title":"Concurr. Comput. Pract. Exp."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Delvaux, J., and Verbauwhede, I. (2013, January 2\u20133). Side channel modeling attacks on 65nm arbiter PUFs exploiting CMOS device noise. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), Austin, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2013.6581579"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Helfmeier, C., Boit, C., Nedospasov, D., and Seifert, J.-P. (2013, January 2\u20133). Cloning physically unclonable functions. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), Austin, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2013.6581556"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Xiao, K., Rahman, M.T., Forte, D., Huang, Y., Su, M., and Tehranipoor, M. (2014, January 6\u20137). Bit selection algorithm suitable for high-volume production of SRAM-PUF. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), Arlington, VA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2014.6855578"},{"key":"ref_22","unstructured":"Roel, M.A.E.S. (2012). Physically Unclonable Functions: Constructions, Properties and Applications. [Ph.D. Thesis, University of KU Leuven]."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"889","DOI":"10.1109\/TCAD.2014.2370531","article-title":"Helper data algorithms for PUF-based key generation: Overview and analysis","volume":"34","author":"Delvaux","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Comput.-Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2505","DOI":"10.1109\/16.735728","article-title":"Random Dopant Induced Threshold Voltage Lowering and Fluctuations in Sub-0.1 \u00b5m MOSFET\u2019s: A 3-D \u201cAtomistic\u201d Simulation Study","volume":"45","author":"Asenov","year":"1998","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Electron Devices"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Claes, M., van der Leest, V., and Braeken, A. (2011). Comparison of SRAM and FF PUF in 65nm technology. Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-29615-4_5"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guajardo, J., Kumar, S.S., Schrijen, G.J., and Tuyls, P. (2007, January 27\u201329). Physical Unclonable Functions and Public-Key Crypto for FPGA IP Protection. Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.","DOI":"10.1109\/FPL.2007.4380646"}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/18\/6\/1776\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T15:06:52Z","timestamp":1760195212000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/18\/6\/1776"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,1]]},"references-count":26,"journal-issue":{"issue":"6","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,6]]}},"alternative-id":["s18061776"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s18061776","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,1]]}}}