PUF the Magic DRAmGON: Persistent Storage in Volatile Memory using Rowhammer PUF

Abstract

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) exploit inherent manufacturing variations in electronic devices to create unique hardware fingerprints, which are typically used as a source of randomness for generating device-specific cryptographic keys. In this work, however, we explore the possibility of repurposing PUFs as a secure storage mechanism for pre-existing keys. First, we evaluate existing RH-PUFs, introduce five novel RH-PUF constructions, and compare all of them with respect to their suitability for cryptographic key generation. Second, we propose DRAmGON, a novel, unconventional PUF-based approach that enables the direct encoding of cryptographic keys into Rowhammer-susceptible DRAM, thereby allowing persistent data storage in volatile memory. Our experiments using FlippyRAM show that 81 % of the tested systems exhibit Rowhammer susceptibility, establishing RH-PUFs as a viable hardware-based security primitive. 

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