35th Chaos Communication Congress: PHYSEC presents details on the application of their technology

At the 35th annual conference of the Chaos Computer Club (35C3), the largest international hacker meeting in Europe, Christian Zenger, David Holin and Lars Steinschulte presented PHYSEC’s Enclosure-PUF technology.

This year’s Cha­os Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Con­gress attrac­ted more than 16,000 visi­tors to the exhi­bi­ti­on halls in Leip­zig on three days. Under the mot­to “Refres­hing Memo­ries” it was the venue for important deba­tes, lec­tures and work­shops on tech­ni­cal and socio-poli­ti­cal topics.

It was the first time that we gave insights into the PHYSEC tech­no­lo­gy. With Enclo­sure-PUF we pre­sen­ted an inno­va­ti­ve tech­no­lo­gy that makes it pos­si­ble to veri­fy the authen­ti­ci­ty, inte­gri­ty and phy­si­cal sta­te of a phy­si­cal object and to pro­ve cor­re­spon­ding state­ments via digi­tal chan­nels.

In public envi­ron­ments, data extrac­tion from or mani­pu­la­ti­on of com­pu­ter sys­tems is easy to per­form as it requi­res only phy­si­cal access. The aim of the talk was the­re­fo­re to demons­tra­te exem­pla­ry tam­per resis­tance by means of a (very inex­pen­si­ve) self-built test bed in order to pro­tect secret infor­ma­ti­on without attack detec­tion or data era­su­re cir­cuit. The use of elec­tro­ma­gne­tic waves (or their pro­pa­ga­ti­on beha­viour) enab­les the pro­tec­tion of indi­vi­du­al small com­pon­ents to be exten­ded to the ent­i­re peri­phe­ry of a sys­tem. This in turn leads to the detec­tion of mani­pu­la­ti­ons so that sui­ta­ble coun­ter­mea­su­res can be taken in good time. The pro­tec­tion can be used fle­xi­b­ly with regard to size and app­li­ca­ti­on.

In 2018, we were awar­ded the Ger­man IT Secu­ri­ty Pri­ze of the Horst Görtz Foun­da­ti­on for the deve­lo­p­ment of the Enclo­sure PUF.

David Holin, Lars Steinschulte and Christian Zenger (f.l.t.r.) from PHYSEC during the talk at the 35C3 in Leipzig

Mis­sed the talk? Click here for the record­ing.