Paper 2016/386 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2016/386 ↗

Canary Numbers: Design for Light-weight Online Testability of True Random Number Generators

Vladimir Rožić
Bohan Yang
Nele Mentens
Ingrid Verbauwhede
Abstract

We introduce the concept of canary numbers, to be used in health tests for true random number generators. Health tests are essential components of true random number generators because they are used to detect defects and failures of the entropy source. These tests need to be lightweight, low-latency and highly reliable. The proposed solution uses canary numbers which are an extra output of the entropy source of lower quality. This enables an early-warning attack detection before the output of the generator is compromised. We illustrate the idea with 2 case studies of true random number generators implemented on a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Applications
Publication info
Preprint.
History
2016-04-15: last updated
2016-04-15: published
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2016/386
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2016/386,
      author = {Vladimir Rožić and Bohan Yang and Nele Mentens and Ingrid Verbauwhede},
      title = {Canary Numbers: Design for Light-weight Online Testability of True Random Number Generators},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2016/386},
      year = {2016},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/386}
}
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