Physical Unclonable Functions and Their Applications to Vehicle System Security

In recent years, there has been a tremendous increase in the usage of IT based systems in vehicles, with predictions that in the near future, more than 90% of innovations in the automotive sector will be centered on IT software and hardware. However, innovation also means that intellectual property (IP) is created, which is valuable to third (potentially) untrusted and malicious parties. In particular, automobiles are already suffering from security issues, such as illegal copying of software IP, counterfeiting of electronic components, illegal tampering with digital data inside the electronic control units (ECUs), etc. Recently, physical unclonable functions (PUFs) attracted significant interest for numerous applications such as protection of software and hardware IP, secure key storage and component identification, to name a few. In this paper, we describe how PUFs can be used for secure key storage, component identification, IP protection in vehicle applications, and their suitability for vehicle insurance applications.