IACR News item: 30 October 2015
Chenglu Jin, Xiaolin Xu, Wayne Burleson, Ulrich Rührmair, Marten van Dijk
ePrint ReportWe show PLayPUFs can realize forward and {\\it backward} secure key management schemes for public key encryption. The new notion of backward security informally means that even if an attacker uncovers a session key through the key management interface, the legitimate user will detect this leakage before he will ever use the session key. Backward security and its implementation via PLayPUFs allow the construction of novel, self-recovering certificate authorities (CAs) without relying on a digital master key. Our new CAs immediately detect key exposure through their interfaces, and recover from it without stopping their service, and without ever issuing certificates based on such exposed keys. This is a crucial step forward in implementing secure key management. We deliver a full proof-of-concept implementation of our new scheme on FPGA together with detailed performance data, as well as formal definitions of our new concepts, including the first definition of stateful PUFs.
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