Method and System for Electronically Securing an Electronic Biometric Device Using Physically Unclonable Functions
First Claim
1. A security enhanced biometric sensor comprising;
- a biometric sensor capable of measuring one or more unique biometric parameters;
said biometric sensor being composed of at least one part;
said part mounted in an enclosure;
a unique physically unclonable function (PUF) circuit;
said PUF circuit mounted in the same enclosure as said at least one part of the biometric sensor;
wherein the integrity of the biometric output of said biometric sensor may be ascertained by challenging said security enhanced biometric sensor with various input challenges and verifying that the output of said security enhanced biometric sensor is in accordance with the output that would expected as a result of the operation of that unique PUF circuit.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system for securing an integrated circuit chip used for biometric sensors, or other electronic devices, by utilizing a physically unclonable function (PUF) circuit. These PUF functions are in turn used to generate security words and keys, such as an RSA public or private key. Such a system can be used to protect biometric security sensors and IC chips, such as fingerprint sensors and sensor driver chips, from attack or spoofing. The system may also be used in an efficient method to produce unique device set-up or power-up authentication security keys. These keys can be generated on a low frequency basis, and then frequently reused for later security verification purposes. In operation, the stored keys can be used to efficiently authenticate the device without the need to frequently run burdensome security key generation processes each time, while maintaining good device security.
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Citations
42 Claims
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1. A security enhanced biometric sensor comprising;
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a biometric sensor capable of measuring one or more unique biometric parameters; said biometric sensor being composed of at least one part; said part mounted in an enclosure; a unique physically unclonable function (PUF) circuit; said PUF circuit mounted in the same enclosure as said at least one part of the biometric sensor; wherein the integrity of the biometric output of said biometric sensor may be ascertained by challenging said security enhanced biometric sensor with various input challenges and verifying that the output of said security enhanced biometric sensor is in accordance with the output that would expected as a result of the operation of that unique PUF circuit. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A method of electronically securing a biometric sensor device comprised of sensor circuitry, physically unclonable function (PUF) circuitry, and nonvolatile memory (storage), comprising:
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generating an output from the PUF circuit to produce a PUF output; retrieving a transfer function parameter from storage; and generating a security key by performing a transfer function algorithm using the PUF output and a transfer function parameter and using this security key to validate biometric data output by said biometric sensor. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
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25. A method for electronically securing a device, comprising:
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reading an output from a physically unclonable function (PUF) circuit as a PUF output; computing transfer function parameters using the PUF output; and storing the transfer function parameters in nonvolatile memory for subsequent operations to generate security keys by combining the PUF output with the transfer function parameters. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38)
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39. A system for electronically securing a device, comprising:
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a physically unclonable circuit (PUF) configured to generate a persistent random number a security word; nonvolatile memory configured to store at least one transfer function parameter; and a processor configured to generate a security key by processing the security word and the transfer function. - View Dependent Claims (40, 41, 42)
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Specification