IIT Kharagpur Scientists designed the "Physically Unclonable Functions" (PUF) which are fingerprint generator circuits that can protect Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure from manipulation. The IoT devices like doctors remotely monitoring the pacemaker in a patient's heart and modifying its pace, run on a command being sent out from one device to another through a network, and these commands are often unencrypted. This makes electronic devices vulnerable to hacking and manipulations in command.
Rajat Subhra Chakraborty from IIT Kharagpur who is one of the two main faculty members leading the research efforts associated with the IoT Laboratory of the CSE department stated that the PUF can be installed in any of the IoT device as they are light in weight and consume very less power. PUFs are fingerprint generator circuits for electronic objects which uniquely identify each object, and help in authenticating the commands sent to connected IoT devices. The receiving device shall read the command, verify the authenticity of the sender and then operate.
Urbi Chatterjee a research scholar at CSE department stated that the team has already developed a prototype and it is tested on commercially available devices at the IoT Lab. For wireless smart lighting system and wireless IP CCTV camera, testing has been successfully completed. The team equipped the devices with PUF and tested them for unauthorised usage which was prevented through PUF.