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EMBEDDED WORLD 2023: SECURITY FOCUS
Hardware Root of Trust: The Key to IoT Security

in Smart Homes

By Anne-Françoise Pelé

hen everything is connected, secure. Intrinsic ID, a spinout of Royal Philips
everything is at risk. The Electronics, has developed IP solutions based
proliferation of internet-of- on physical unclonable functions (PUFs) to
Wthings devices for smart homes secure connected devices.
has raised security and privacy concerns for
their users. By implementing a hardware SECURING TRUST
root of trust, the authenticity, integrity and With the explosion of connected IoT devices
confidentiality of devices are enforced, and per household, it has become critical to
smart homes are protected against would-be ensure data security and privacy preservation.
attackers. Every device potentially represents an entry
point for malicious intrusion, from the device
Implementing a hardware itself to the network it is connected to.
A hardware root of trust is the foundation
root of trust enforces the for protecting smart-home endpoints and
authenticity, integrity and services. It establishes an anchor point for the
chain of trust by creating a unique, immutable
confidentiality of devices and and unclonable identity to authorize a device Intrinsic ID’s Pim Tuyls

protects smart homes from in the IoT network.
For many years, PUFs have been deployed
would-be attackers. as a hardware root of trust. A PUF is a physical and scalable way, we extract the credentials
structure from which a device-unique and
unclonable cryptographic key is created. It from the hardware of the chip itself,” Pim
Security in IoT should never be an after- leverages the deep-submicron variations that Tuyls, CEO of Intrinsic ID, explained in an
thought. Over the years, attacks have become occur naturally during the chip- interview with EE Times Europe. “Every chip
more frequent, sophisticated, devious and manufacturing process and gives each transis- is physically different due to the process by
targeted. From the voice assistant to the baby tor slightly random electrical properties. which it is made.
monitor to the smart-heating system, billions There are different ways to use a PUF to “When a chip is made, silicon is doped to
of smart-home devices are now vulnerable to secure a device. Eindhoven, Netherlands– make sure you get some electrical properties
endpoint intrusions. based Intrinsic ID has built a foundation of in the transistors,” he added. “That doping
To establish a foundation of trust, IoT trust based on static random-access memory cannot be 100% controlled, and the result is
device makers need to get identities and (SRAM) PUFs. that every transistor on the chip has a unique
keys into their devices and keep these assets “To build a root of trust in a very secure threshold voltage.”

Keeping secrets secret (Source: Intrinsic ID)

MARCH 2023 | www.eetimes.eu