Producing Unique Identifiers and Random Numbers on Basis of Unclonable Parameters of Microcontrollers and Undesired Effects

jitter, random number, unique identifier, generator

Main goal of this paper is to utilize component-of-the-shelf microcontrollers (MCUs) to show how their unique and distinctive physical properties can be utilized to enhance the security of embedded systems with no necessity to modify the hardware for the purpose. It is shown in the paper that even if each MCU chip is produced by the same procedure and technology, there are some slight changes that make it being both unique and random in some sense. Almost 100k experiments were performed to verify the concept proposed in the paper on more than 100 MCU chips to show both simplicity and general applicability of our concept. During the first set of about 50k experiments, same piece of a trivial code with no middleware being utilized was executed on each MCU with the goal to produce its unique identifier as well as a unique sequence of random numbers based on the physical properties of that MCU. During the second set of experiments, the production was repeated, but on basis of a real-time operating system layer to observe impacts of the additional layer to results of the production process. Freescale's MC9S08JM60 MCU and Micrium's uC/OS-II kernel was utilized during the experiments.