Utilizing the Digital Fingerprint Method for Secure Key Generation

This research examines a new way to generate an uncloneable secure key by taking advantage of the delay characteristics of individual transistors. The user profiles the circuit to deduce the glitch count of each output line for each number of selectable buffers added to the circuit. The user can then use this information to generate a specific glitch count on each output line, which is passed to an encryption algorithm as its key. The results detail tests of two configurations for adding a selectable amount of buffers into each glitch circuit in order to induce additional delay. One configuration adds up to seven buffers that is equivalent to the binary digits used on the three SELECT lines of a multiplexer. The second, referred to as the cascaded design, has eight different quantities of selectable buffers, but they all connect to one multiplexer. Each successive line connects to the previous line and adds a certain number of buffers.