Towards Securing Smart Homes: A Practical SRAM PUF-Based Two-Factor Authentication Framework

The surge in smart home technologies highlights the need for robust and scalable authentication methods to guard against constantly evolving cyber threats. This paper presents a practical two-factor authentication (2FA) framework that leverages SRAM-based Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to establish secure, hardware-rooted identities for IoT devices, all without requiring additional hardware or centralized cloud services. By harnessing the inherent randomness in SRAM startup values, the system produces unique cryptographic keys that are difficult to clone and resistant to physical tampering. To ensure reliable key regeneration, adaptive error correction techniques such as fuzzy extractors and Hamming Distance measures are employed to stabilize noisy PUF responses across varying environmental conditions. Testing on budget-friendly development boards like Raspberry Pi and ESP32 demonstrates that the framework can adapt to real-world environmental changes, making it suitable for a range of smart home applications. This research addresses significant gaps in previous studies by bridging theoretical PUF concepts with practical applications, offering a scalable, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution that enhances IoT device authentication and lays the groundwork for standardized security protocols in smart home settings.