Longmate, Kieran and Young, Robert (2023) Harnessing QD-PUFs for Secure Authentication via Fuzzy Fingerprint Generation. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
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Abstract
The field of security technology is an eternal race. For every step forwards that is made in producing technology to help secure something it is not long behind it that those who seek to attack it make one also. Cryptography is one key example, even as encryption algorithms get more advanced so too do the computers that can be used to brute force them. Anti-counterfeiting is another. For each new complex watermark or hologram to prove authenticity there shortly follows better production techniques that aid in replicating them. There is a solution to this within the concept of Quantum Dot Physically Unclonable Functions (QD-PUFs). Underpinned by the laws of quantum physics rather than mathematically hard problems they are, as their name suggests, impossible to replicate. Providing an extremely appealing solution to security concerns where authentication and identification are required. There are several matters however that prevent QD-PUFs from being used in a much more wide spread manner. The aim of this thesis is therefore to address these in order to move QD-PUFs closer to being widely available. The foremost of these issues is a way to digitise the output of QD-PUFs. This forms the bulk of this thesis in detailing, analysing and discussing the fingerprinting algorithms designed to perform this task. As well as this the stability of the QD-PUFs, how to hide the information within fingerprints and the influence of varying incident wavelengths are covered. All to provide a comprehensive discussion on QD-PUFs and their fingerprints.