Intrinsic ID partners with DARPA to offer digital authentication and security tech to researchers

Intrinsic ID announced a partnership with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to make its digital authentication and security technology accessible to DARPA researchers. The Intrinsic ID QuiddiKey hardware IP and Apollo FPGA IP will be available through the DARPA Toolbox Initiative, which provides DARPA researchers open licensing opportunities with commercial technology vendors.

“This partnership extends the reach of our advanced IP for root of trust security, key management, authentication, and trusted supply chain to the DARPA research community,” said Pim Tuyls, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Intrinsic ID. “We are happy to provide DARPA researchers with easy access to our cryptographic solutions to secure user keys and user data, authenticate devices, and protect communications between devices on user networks.”

“DARPA Toolbox participants benefit from simpler and lower-cost access to IP without having to negotiate licensing and access terms, leaving them more time to advance science to benefit the nation,” said Serge Leef, Program Manager, DARPA Microsystems Technology Office. “We are happy to have Intrinsic ID in this program, which will enable our researchers to have streamlined access to critical security IP that has been proven in other Military, Aerospace and Government applications for a strong root of trust and authentication.”

QuiddiKey IP can be applied easily to almost any chip – from tiny microcontrollers to high-performance systems-on-chip, to secure the products with internally generated, device-unique cryptographic keys. It uses the inherently random start-up values of SRAM as a PUF, which generates the entropy required for a strong hardware root of trust.

Since SRAM is a standard component available upon initial release of any process technology, the IP can be used with any foundry and process-node technology. QuiddiKey has been deployed and proven in hundreds of millions of devices certified by NIST, EMVCo, Visa, CC EAL6+, PSA, ioXt, and governments across the globe.

Apollo FPGA IP is a “soft” PUF solution that enables defense contractors and other DARPA funded research entities to give FPGAs a unique identity and to secure them at every phase of the supply chain. Apollo combines a Butterfly PUF with Intrinsic ID’s helper data algorithms to intrinsically generate the entropy needed for a strong hardware root of trust.

Keys derived from Apollo are volatile and derived only when required, providing a significantly high security assurance. Since Apollo is part of the FPGA configuration file it is a “soft PUF” implementation and security functionality can be retrofitted on existing or even deployed devices, enabling remote “brownfield” installation of a hardware root of trust.