Now Let’s Make It Physical! Enabling Trusted Certificate Issuance in PKI via Physical Bindings

Xiaolin Zhang; Chenghao Chen; Kailun Qin; Yuxuan Wang; Shipei Qu; Tengfei Wang; Chi Zhang; Dawu Gu

Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 21st EAI International Conference, SecureComm 2025, Xiangtan, China, July 4–6, 2025, Proceedings, Part III

Research Article

Now Let’s Make It Physical! Enabling Trusted Certificate Issuance in PKI via Physical Bindings

Cite: BibTeX Plain Text

@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-032-23453-7_30,
    author={Xiaolin Zhang and Chenghao Chen and Kailun Qin and Yuxuan Wang and Shipei Qu and Tengfei Wang and Chi Zhang and Dawu Gu},
    title={Now Let’s Make It Physical! Enabling Trusted Certificate Issuance in PKI via Physical Bindings},
    proceedings={Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 21st EAI International Conference, SecureComm 2025, Xiangtan, China, July 4--6, 2025, Proceedings, Part III},
    proceedings_a={SECURECOMM},
    year={2026},
    month={11},
    keywords={Public Key Infrastructure Certificate Authority Physically Unclonable Function Key Protection},
    doi={10.1007/978-3-032-23453-7_30}
}

Xiaolin Zhang
Chenghao Chen
Kailun Qin
Yuxuan Wang
Shipei Qu
Tengfei Wang
Chi Zhang
Dawu Gu
Year: 2026
Now Let’s Make It Physical! Enabling Trusted Certificate Issuance in PKI via Physical Bindings
SECURECOMM
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-23453-7_30

Xiaolin Zhang¹^,*, Chenghao Chen¹^,*, Kailun Qin¹^,*, Yuxuan Wang¹^,*, Shipei Qu¹^,*, Tengfei Wang¹^,*, Chi Zhang¹^,*, Dawu Gu¹^,*

1: Shanghai Jiao Tong University

*Contact email: xiaolinzhang@sjtu.edu.cn, ch.chen@sjtu.edu.cn, kailun.qin@sjtu.edu.cn, 18588297218@sjtu.edu.cn, shipeiqu@sjtu.edu.cn, tengfei2019@sjtu.edu.cn, zcsjtu@sjtu.edu.cn, dwgu@sjtu.edu.cn

Abstract

The signing key protection of Certificate Authorities (CAs) had been a critical challenge in PKI. Traditional protections struggle to eliminate the risk of key exposure due to various unexpected human errors. This long-standing dilemma motivates us to propose , a novel PKI security extension using the trusted binding of Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) for CAs. PUFs leverage manufacturing variations to generate unique and random responses. They physically bind CAs and thus can avoid using a digital private key.

Keywords: Public Key Infrastructure, Certificate Authority, Physically Unclonable Function, Key Protection

Published: 2026-11-02
Appears in: SpringerLink

: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-23453-7_30

EUDL

Now Let’s Make It Physical! Enabling Trusted Certificate Issuance in PKI via Physical Bindings

Abstract

About EAI

Community

Publish with EAI