The widespread use of true random number generators (TRNGs) has taken a step closer following the creation of the most lightweight designs to date by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast’s Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT).
Members of the Institute’s cryptography research team have produced a series of circuits that are up to 50 per cent smaller than anything else currently available. Optimised for digital circuits, FPGA and ASIC, they push efficiency to the limit by using just one logic gate, one look-up table and four transistors respectively.
TRNGs are essential for IT security because virtually any security application relies on unpredictable numbers such as cryptographic keys. Current systems however are either too expensive or are not fast enough for many applications. That is why more nimble pseudo-random number generators are in widespread use even though the sequences they generate can be detected under certain types of attack, making them much less secure.
The approach of ECIT researchers Jiang Wu and Dr Máire O’Neill has been to use the white noise inside the circuit to generate the randomness, effectively simulating the toss of a coin. To do this, they developed a new mechanism to measure the noise and generate the random output.
“The most challenging part of the work was to find the new mechanism that can effectively sample the noise,” said Wu.
“True random number generators have been extensively studied in recent years; many very efficient designs based on different noise measurement mechanisms have been proposed. It was not clear if more efficient designs were even possible. After investigating several candidates, finally we found a successful one.”
The next step is to find ways of making the generators sufficiently robust to be embedded in devices such as mobile phones, smartcards and RFID tags, and — where they are used for security applications – to secure them from attack and develop appropriate countermeasures.
Other related work currently underway at ECIT includes designs for highly efficient physical unclonable functions (PUFs). These authenticate individual chips by extracting and identifying — but without revealing – their unique fingerprints which can then be used in a variety of security applications.
Media inquiries to Brian Arlow on +44 (0) 28 9147 0700 or (mob) +44 (0) 7860 289143 or email [email protected]
NOTES TO EDITORS
ECIT
Part of The School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s University Belfast, ECIT is housed in a specially designed 4,000m2 building, located off-campus, at the Northern Ireland Science Park in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. The Institute has four research groups covering areas such as broadband wireless communications, electronic data security, image and speech processing, telecommunications software and antenna design for mobile communications. The Institute currently employs 140 people.
Research at ECIT’s High Frequency Electronics Circuits division covers aspects ranging from custom high performance gallium arsenide and sub micron silicon integrated chips to self adapting antenna solutions, monolithic packaging strategies and analytical and computational electromagnetics.
Cryptography research staff
Dr Máire O’Neill who leads ECIT’s cryptography research team, held a prestigious five-year UK Royal Academy of Engineering research fellowship from 2003 to 2008 in the area of cryptographic algorithms and architectures for system-on-chip. She is the recent recipient of a £1.2m Leadership fellowship grant funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to conduct research into next generation data security architectures.
She has received numerous awards for her research. She was awarded the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) prize at the 2006 IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year event and in 2007 was named British Female Inventor of the Year at the British Female Inventors & Innovators Network (BFIIN) awards.
For further information please visit www.ecit.qub.ac.uk/ or contact Brian Arlow on +44 (0) 28 9147 0700 or (mob) +44 (0) 7860 289143
