Blockchain-Enhanced PUF Authentication for IoT Devices

Abstract

The widespread use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in various critical settings highlights the importance of robust authentication mechanisms to safeguard applications from misuse and breaches. Traditional authentication schemes rely on cryptographic protocols to ensure high levels of security. However, their effectiveness depends on maintaining the confidentiality of cryptographic keys and faces challenges when deployed on devices with limited resources. This paper presents a new approach for designing an authentication scheme that eliminates the need for storing keys in device memory and operates without a centralized authority. We propose a lightweight mutual authentication scheme that leverages Static Random Access Memory (SRAM)-based Physical Unclonable Function (PUF), utilizing the inherent randomness generated during SRAM manufacturing to create keys. The solution is further strengthened with blockchain technology, enabling decentralized management and authority. This research proposes a new secure authentication protocol for IoT-enabled critical industrial applications by incorporating decentralization, scalability, freshness, and non-repudiation. We evaluate the time and resource consumption of our implementation on the ATmega328P chip, which has limited resources with 2 KB of SRAM and 32 KB of flash memory, and formally prove the scheme security using the Scyther tool.