Security assessment of photonic integrated circuit-based physically unclonable functions
Abstract
Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) have emerged as a promising hardware security primitive, and recent years have seen growing interest in realizing PUFs on photonic integrated circuits (PICs). We classify existing PIC-based PUFs into electrically configured and optically encoded designs. Notably, security properties remain insufficiently analyzed, with mathematical unclonability often assumed without supporting argument. To illustrate this issue, we introduce a modeling attack against the subclass of optically encoded PUFs that operate in a linear optical regime. We show that, for a representative simulated PUF construction, observing as few as 200 challenge-response pairs allows learning the challenge-response mapping. Under canonical modeling assumptions, linear optically encoded PUFs are therefore mathematically clonable, calling for a careful assessment of their suitability for authentication protocols that rely on mathematical unclonability.
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BibTeX
@article{kieninger2026security,
title = {{Security assessment of photonic integrated circuit-based physically unclonable functions}},
author = {Hans Kieninger and Paul Jimenez and Fabio Pavanello and David Navarro and Thach Nguyen and Arnan Mitchell and Cédric Marchand},
journal = {Optics Express},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1364/oe.597136},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05765389v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Security assessment of photonic integrated circuit-based physically unclonable functions
AU - Hans Kieninger
AU - Paul Jimenez
AU - Fabio Pavanello
AU - David Navarro
AU - Thach Nguyen
AU - Arnan Mitchell
AU - Cédric Marchand
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/17
JO - Optics Express
DO - 10.1364/oe.597136
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05765389v1
AB - Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) have emerged as a promising hardware security primitive, and recent years have seen growing interest in realizing PUFs on photonic integrated circuits (PICs). We classify existing PIC-based PUFs into electrically configured and optically encoded designs. Notably, security properties remain insufficiently analyzed, with mathematical unclonability often assumed without supporting argument. To illustrate this issue, we introduce a modeling attack against the subclass of optically encoded PUFs that operate in a linear optical regime. We show that, for a representative simulated PUF construction, observing as few as 200 challenge-response pairs allows learning the challenge-response mapping. Under canonical modeling assumptions, linear optically encoded PUFs are therefore mathematically clonable, calling for a careful assessment of their suitability for authentication protocols that rely on mathematical unclonability.
SN - 1094-4087
ER -