A Lightweight Authentication Protocol against Modeling Attacks based on a Novel LFSR-APUF

Simple authentication protocols based on conventional physical unclonable function (PUF) are vulnerable to modeling attacks and other security threats. This paper proposes an arbiter PUF based on a linear feedback shift register (LFSR-APUF). Different from the previously reported linear feedback shift register for challenge extension, the proposed scheme feeds the external random challenges into the LFSR module to obfuscate the linear mapping relationship between the challenge and response. It can prevent attackers from obtaining valid challenge-response pairs (CRPs), increasing its resistance to modeling attacks significantly. A 64-stage LFSR-APUF has been implemented on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) board. The experimental results reveal that the proposed design can effectively resist various modeling attacks such as logistic regression (LR), evolutionary strategy (ES), Artificial Neuro Network (ANN), and support vector machine (SVM) with a prediction rate of 51.79% and a slight effect on the randomness, reliability, and uniqueness. Further, a lightweight authentication protocol is established based on the proposed LFSR-APUF. The protocol incorporates a low-overhead, ultra-lightweight, novel private bit conversion Cover function that is uniquely bound to each device in the authentication network. A dynamic and timevariant obfuscation scheme in combination with the proposed LFSR-APUF is implemented in the protocol. The proposed authentication protocol not only resists spoofing attacks, physical attacks, and modeling attacks effectively, but also ensures the security of the entire authentication network by transferring important information in encrypted form from the server to the database even when the attacker completely controls the server.