ODHD: On-Demand Helper Data Generation for Reliable NVM-Free Key Derivation from SRAM PUF. Sara Faour, Malisa Vucinic, Filip Maksimovic, Thomas Watteyne, Kristofer Pister. IEEE International Conference on Information Security And Cryptology (ISC), Ankara, Türkiye, 22–23 October 2025.
Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) extract secure keys from inherent hardware variations, without storing them in non-volatile memory (NVM). SRAM PUFs leverage existing memory, but suffer from reliability issues due to noise. Current methods address this using complex error correction with NVM-stored helper data or by pre-selecting stable cells through repeated measurements. Avoiding NVM reduces leakage risks and manufacturing costs, benefiting low-end devices without NVM. This paper presents a novel self-contained approach for stabilizing SRAM PUFs without NVM-stored helper data, using a simple decoder and few SRAM measurements.
