Biblio

The development of edge computing and machine learning technologies have led to the growth of Industrial IoT systems. Autonomous decision making and smart manufacturing are flourishing in the current age of Industry 4.0. By providing more compute power to edge devices and connecting them to the internet, the so-called Cyber Physical Systems are prone to security threats like never before. Security in the current industry is based on cryptographic techniques that use pseudorandom number keys. Keys generated by a pseudo-random number generator pose a security threat as they can be predicted by a malicious third party. In this work, we propose a secure Industrial IoT Architecture that makes use of true random numbers generated by a quantum random number generator (QRNG). CITRIOT's FireConnect IoT node is used to show the proof of concept in a quantum-safe network where the random keys are generated by a cloud based quantum device. We provide an implementation of QRNG on both real quantum computer and quantum simulator. Then, we compare the results with pseudorandom numbers generated by a classical computer.

Random number generators play a pivotal role in generating security primitives, e.g., encryption keys, nonces, initial vectors, and random masking for side-channel countermeasures. A quantum entropy source based on radioactive isotope decay can be exploited to generate random numbers with sufficient entropy. If a deterministic random bit generator (DRBG) is combined for post-processing, throughput of the quantum random number generator (QRNG) can be improved. However, general DRBGs are susceptible to side-channel attacks. In this paper, we propose a framework called SCR-QRNG framework, which offers Side-Channel Resistant primitives using QRNG. The QRNG provides sources of randomness for modulating the clock frequency of a DRBG to obfuscate side-channel leakages, and to generate unbiased random numbers for security primitives. The QRNG has robustness against power side-channel attacks and is in compliance with NIST SP 800-22/90B and BSI AIS 31. We fabricate a quantum entropy chip, and implement a PCB module for a random frequency clock generator and a side-channel resistant QRNG on an FPGA.