RRAM based lightweight user authentication

Resistance switching memories have emerged as a promising solution for low power and high density non-volatile storage. Unique electronic properties of resistive RAMs (and memristors) have attracted not only memory applications, but other applications such as neuromorphic computation and security as well. In this paper, we investigate how to take advantage of the availability of RRAM devices or components in the system to perform lightweight user authentication. Based on several well-known features of RRAM devices, we argue that the basic requirements for user authentication are met in RRAM devices. Then, we design three RRAM utility functions, namely Read State, Read Pulse Write State, and Copy State that are critical to develop RRAM based user authentication protocols. We propose two such protocol primitives to illustrate the concepts, layout the hardware design, and discuss the potential attacks to these protocols and the corresponding countermeasures. We conclude that under realistic attacking assumptions, the proposed protocols are secure. Finally, we use PTM´s 65nm MOSFET models and perform HSPICE simulation of our proposed RRAM based hardware authentication units to demonstrate the reliability of our protocols against environmental variations such as temperature, noise, unbalanced set/reset, filament formation variation and device aging.