On the Feasibility of PReF-Based Distributed Attestation for Homogeneous IoT Networks

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices introduces significant challenges for remote attestation, particularly under tight resource constraints. Physically Related Functions (PReFs) are a promising primitive that enables devices to establish shared secrets without storing key material, by exploiting the statistical likelihood of intersecting ChallengeResponse Pairs (CRPs) across distinct Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs). This paper presents a lightweight, decentralized attestation protocol for homogeneous IoT networks built on PReFs. The protocol comprises a setup phase, in which devices exchange CRP subsets and derive related challenges, and an attestation phase, in which peer devices mutually attest one another and collectively converge on a consensus about network integrity. The protocol requires no Trusted Third Party (TTP) and supports dynamic network reconfiguration. A simulation-based evaluation answers the feasibility of these networks evaluating three metrics: setup phase feasibility, attestation correctness, and reconfiguration overhead. Results confirm that if a network has at least 16 members and uses PUFswith at least 8 bits, the members can reliably yield sufficient related challenges, that the attestation protocol correctly identifies all compromised nodes, and that reconfiguration incurs only linear overhead in network size.