Where Do All My Keys Come From?

Nowadays, cyber-physical systems are omnipresent in our daily lives and are increasingly used to process confidential data. While the variety of portable devices we use excessively at home and at work is steadily increasing, their security vulnerabilities are often not noticed by the user. Therefore, portable devices such as wearables are becoming more and more interesting for adversaries. Thus, a robust and secure software design is required for the implementation of cryptographic communication protocols and encryption algorithms. While these topics are well discussed and subject to further research activities, the issue of provisioning the initial device setup is widely uncovered. However, the protection of the initial setup is as important as the protection of the confidential data during the time in use. In this work, the authors will present solutions for a secure initialization of security critical integrated circuits (ICs).