ABSTRACT
The latest electronic devices are seeking a much smaller CMOS device, but limitless scaling down of CMOS transistor leads to degradation in its performance. The classical security designs using CMOS devices are prone to physical and side-channel attacks. The missing element, the ‘memristor’, whose concept was proposed by Leon Chua, is becoming the best choice for emerging hardware security design. A few characteristics of the memristor that, observed at the beginning, seem to be problematic, have turned into a blessing for security design, and these characteristics are bidirectionality, process variation, nonvolatility, and radiation hardness. Due to ultralow power consumption and high computational speeds, the memristor is drawing the attention of researchers, as it also is useful in digital memory design, neuromorphic systems, logic circuits, and hardware security systems. In this chapter, various memristor applications in hardware and software security systems will be focused on. It will comprise a memristor-based physically unclonable function (PUF), which became a novel security primitive. Memristor applications also will be explained as a true random number generator, by which the security of the digital transaction can be improved. The tamper detection circuits developed with memristors are capable of detecting tampering with the secret information in smart cards, and therefore memristor-based tamper sensitive circuits to protect the secret data are also briefed here. Finally, the utilization of the memristor in forensics, crypto architecture, and neuromorphic security systems will also be explained, which will enhance the memristor applicability in the designing of advanced information protection digital circuits and systems. It would be beneficial to graduate/undergraduate students, people in the industry, and researchers working in the same regime.
