Printed Circuit Boards Physically Unclonable Functions
- Detailed Technology Description
- PCB authentication and counterfeit detection
- *Abstract
-
Technology provides a low-cost and robust approach tocheck printed circuit board (PCB) integrity in the presence of counterfeiting attacks, in particular, cloning attacks. It relies on existing, intrinsic manufacturing variations in metal traces of a PCB to create a unique authentication signature from each PCB. Through detailed experimental analysis with common commercial boards, the team has shown that the approach can be highly effective in robust PCB authentication. A major advantage is that it does not require design modification or hardware overhead. They have also shown that impedance measurements from 10 or more traces can provide adequate entropy for authentication. Existing production PCB testing setup can be used to automatically measure trace impedances for this purpose. The technology also enables a design for security (DfS) solution, where a PCB designer may insert carefully crafted additional wire traces that are easier to measure and are hidden from a board's surface. They simplify the authentication process and enhance the entropy, thereby providing even stronger anti-counterfeit protection.Non-provisional application 14/828,305 filed on Aug. 17, 2015.
- Country/Region
- USA
