VOLtA: Voltage over-scaling based lightweight authentication for IoT applications

Abstract

Incorporating security protocols in IoT components is challenging due to their extremely constrained resources. We address this challenge by proposing a hardware-oriented lightweight authentication protocol based on device signature generated during voltage over-scaling (VOS). First, we demonstrate that VOS-based computing leaves a process variation dependent error signature in its approximate results. This error can be methodically profiled to extract information about the underlying process variation in the computation unit. We then combine this error profile with security key based authentication schemes to create a two-factor authentication mechanism. To understand the effectiveness of this protocol, we perform detailed security analysis under various attack scenarios. Finally, we simulate the authentication hardware using a process variation aware 45nm design library in HSpice. Simulation results show that our VOS-based assumptions are valid, and this authentication mechanism can withstand basic environmental variations. Overall, our approach provides a unique approach for using hardware process variations as a key for authentication.