Obscured Asymmetric Crypto-Functions for Secured Identification

Abstract

Emerging self-reconfiguring VLSI devices as SoC-(system-on-chip) units are offering more and more powerful computational and hardware infrastructures. Such infrastructures allow internal self-creation of even asymmetric crypto-functions and keeping them obscured and unknown within the physical device unit. Conventional asymmetric crypto-systems assume the system initiator to be a person with intelligence and access to huge resources. In difference to this conventional use, our proposed initiator is a smart device with its controllable intelligence and capability. Assuming that self-reconfiguring non-volatile SoC units would become available in the near future then such units can be dedicated to act as the substitute system initiators however with monitored capabilities obeying completely our security requirements. Such units can then self-create asymmetric ciphers with completely unknown parameters and even crypto-functions. Such units may act in a novel way as obedient initiators without being capable to reveal any sensitive information. This new operational constellation is presented in this paper. It is shown conceptually how asymmetric (public-key) crypto-functions can be created with completely unknown "obscured" parameters in SoC units. Several possible resulting new operation scenarios are discussed. Few sample system constellation examples using different one-way locks are demonstrated. The use of such SoC units for realizing cloneresistant devices operating in public-key mode is demonstrated by some new generic protocols.