Physical One-Way Functions
The work
| Authors | Ravikanth Pappu; Ben Recht; Jason Taylor; Neil Gershenfeld |
|---|---|
| Editors | |
| Type | article |
| Year | 2002 |
| Citekey | pappu2002physical |
Where it appeared
| Published in | Science |
|---|---|
| Publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
| Volume | 297 |
| Issue | 5589 |
| Pages | 2026--2030 |
Identifiers
| DOI | 10.1126/science.1074376 |
|---|---|
| OpenAlex | W2169212403 |
Access
| Landing page | https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1074376 |
|---|
Abstract
Modern cryptographic practice rests on the use of one-way functions, which are easy to evaluate but difficult to invert. Unfortunately, commonly used one-way functions are either based on unproven conjectures or have known vulnerabilities. We show that instead of relying on number theory, the mesoscopic physics of coherent transport through a disordered medium can be used to allocate and authenticate unique identifiers by physically reducing the medium's microstructure to a fixed-length string of binary digits. These physical one-way functions are inexpensive to fabricate, prohibitively difficult to duplicate, admit no compact mathematical representation, and are intrinsically tamper-resistant. We provide an authentication protocol based on the enormous address space that is a principal characteristic of physical one-way functions.
How it got here
| How it got here | agent via openalex |
|---|---|
| Added | 2026-08-30 16:24 UTC |
| Approved by | a person 2026-09-01 20:33 UTC |
Filed under
Cite it as
@article{pappu2002physical,
title = {Physical One-Way Functions},
author = {Ravikanth Pappu and Ben Recht and Jason Taylor and Neil Gershenfeld},
year = {2002},
journal = {Science},
publisher = {American Association for the Advancement of Science},
volume = {297},
number = {5589},
pages = {2026--2030},
doi = {10.1126/science.1074376},
}
This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/pappu2002physical/ and will keep doing so.