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A ReRAM Physically Unclonable Function (ReRAM PUF)-Based Approach to Enhance Authentication Security in Software Defined Wireless Networks

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Abstract

The exponentially increasing number of ubiquitous wireless devices connected to the Internet in Internet of Things (IoT) networks highlights the need for a new paradigm of data flow management in such large-scale networks under software defined wireless networking (SDWN). The limited power and computation capability available at IoT devices as well as the centralized management and decision making approach in SDWN introduce a whole new set of security threats to the networks. In particular, the authentication mechanism between the controllers and the forwarding devices in SDWNs is a key challenge from both secrecy and integrity aspects. Conventional authentication protocols based on public key infrastructure (PKI) are no longer sufficient for these networks considering the large-scale and heterogeneity nature of the networks as well as their deployment cost, and security vulnerabilities due to key distribution and storage. We propose a novel security protocol based on physical unclonable functions (PUFs) known as hardware security primitives to enhance the authentication security in SDWNs. In this approach, digital PUFs are developed using the inherent randomness of the nanomaterials of Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) that are embedded in most IoT devices to enable a secure authentication and access control in these networks. These PUFs are developed based on a novel approach of multi states, in which the natural drifts due to the physical variations in the environment are predicted to reduce the potential errors in challenge-response pairs of PUFs being tested in different situations. We also proposed a PUF-based PKI protocol to secure the controller in SDWNs. The performance of the developed ReRAM-based PUFs are evaluated in the experimental results. Moreover, the effectiveness of the proposed multi-state machine learning technique to predict the drifts of the PUFs’ responses in different temperature and biased conditions is presented.

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Acknowledgements

This project has been partially supported by Arizona Board of Regents under Grants 1003074 and 1003074. The authors would like to thank their colleagues from the pilot manufacturing facility at Virginia Tech that allowed us to produce quality samples for this work. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which helped us improve the quality and presentation of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA

    Fatemeh Afghah & Bertrand Cambou

  2. Isfahan, Iran

    Masih Abedini

  3. College of Communication and Information, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506-0224, USA

    Sherali Zeadally

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  1. Fatemeh Afghah
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  2. Bertrand Cambou
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  3. Masih Abedini
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  4. Sherali Zeadally
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Correspondence to Fatemeh Afghah.

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This work was partially supported by Arizona Board of Regents, Grant Numbers: 1003073 & 1003074.

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Afghah, F., Cambou, B., Abedini, M. et al. A ReRAM Physically Unclonable Function (ReRAM PUF)-Based Approach to Enhance Authentication Security in Software Defined Wireless Networks. Int J Wireless Inf Networks 25, 117–129 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10776-018-0391-6

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