Resilient Password Management System Using an Array of Addressable Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs)

Description

Attacks from insiders able to divert databases of passwords are a major risk that cannot be resolved by hashing and salting schemes. The use of physical unclonable functions (PUFs) to convert the message digests into streams of responses is attractive because the databases cannot be exploited without controlling the PUFs. The objective of this invention is to offer a way to mitigate the potential failure of the PUFs, thereby enhancing the resilience of architecture. The hardware includes multiple PUFs which can be combined with the usage of multiple passwords to provide backdoor capabilities for ITS management systems in the case of a user forgetting their password. Furthermore, the cases in which a user operates in an insecure environment are also considered. This method does not decrease the throughput of the password management system.

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