"Scientists Harness Chaos to Protect Devices From Hackers"

Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered how to use chaos to help create fingerprints for electronic devices that might be unique enough to thwart the most sophisticated hackers. The researchers believe these fingerprints are unique enough to require more than a lifetime of the universe to try all possible combinations. Daniel Gauthier, the senior author of the study and professor of physics at Ohio State University, has emphasized that chaos is significantly beneficial in the system developed by the team. They created new Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), which are built into computer chips. PUFs utilize the inherent, unique manufacturing variations in computer chips to produce digital fingerprints that can be used to authenticate and secure devices. According to Gauthier, secure ID cards could potentially be created using the new PUFs to track goods in a supply chain. They could also be used in the authentication of applications. The researchers used a web of randomly interconnected logic gates to develop a complex network in their PUFs. Logic gates create a new signal using two electronic signals. The researchers exploit the unreliable behavior created by the non-standard use of the gates to produce a form of deterministic chaos. This chaos magnifies the tiny manufacturing variations found on a computer chip. The amplification of these variations by chaos can change the secrets being produced on the chip, making it more difficult for hackers to figure them out. Chaos results in the production of an uncountably large number of secrets available on a chip. As part of the study, the researchers tested Machine Learning (ML) attacks against their PUF, and they all failed to hack it. This article continues to discuss the problem with current PUFs and the creation of new PUFs that use chaos to protect devices from hackers. 

Science Daily reports "Scientists Harness Chaos to Protect Devices From Hackers"