The Art and Science of Keeping Secrets Secret

Abstract / Description: 

In our connected world, all devices and their data need to be protected against stealing and tampering. State-of-the-Art cryptographic algorithms form the basic tools to achieve this goal. According to Kerckhoff’s principle the cryptographic algorithms used, are public but their secret inputs - the keys - need to be kept secret. Although this sounds like a triviality, in our modern world preserving the secrecy of keys on a chip is a highly non-trivial task. In this talk we will introduce Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) as a fundamental tool to achieve this goal. We will explain how PUFs are used to generate secrets and preserve their secrecy over time, even in adversarial and harsh environments. Therefore, PUFs are used these days for secret generation and storage from the smallest chips such as secure elements, over MCUs to large ones such as FPGAs and HPC devices. 

Bio: 

Pim Tuyls is Executive Director R&D Engineering at Synopsys. In his role he leads all R&D activities for the company’s Security IP. Before joining Synopsys, Pim was the CEO and Co-Founder of Intrinsic ID, which he started in 2008 as a spinout from Philips Research. In 2024 Intrinsic ID was acquired by Synopsys, which is when Pim joined the company and started his current role. Before 2008 Pim was Principal Scientist and managed the cryptography cluster at Philips Research, where he initiated the work on physical unclonable functions (PUFs) that formed the basis of the Intrinsic ID core technology. With more than 20 years’ experience in semiconductors and security, Pim is widely recognized for his work on SRAM PUFs and security for embedded applications. He speaks regularly at technical conferences and has written significantly in the field of security. Pim holds a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Leuven University and holds more than 50 patents.