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Main Authors: Walter, Frederik, Narayanan, Hrishi, Bariffi, Jessica, Lüscher, Anne, Bitar, Rawad, Grass, Robert, Wachter-Zeh, Antonia, Yakhini, Zohar
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14019
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author Walter, Frederik
Narayanan, Hrishi
Bariffi, Jessica
Lüscher, Anne
Bitar, Rawad
Grass, Robert
Wachter-Zeh, Antonia
Yakhini, Zohar
author_facet Walter, Frederik
Narayanan, Hrishi
Bariffi, Jessica
Lüscher, Anne
Bitar, Rawad
Grass, Robert
Wachter-Zeh, Antonia
Yakhini, Zohar
contents In this paper, we introduce chemical functions, a unified framework that models chemical systems as noisy challenge--response primitives, and formalize the associated chemical function infrastructure. Building on the theory of physical functions, we rigorously define robustness, unclonability, and unpredictability for chemical functions in both finite and asymptotic regimes, and specify security games that capture the adversary's power and the security goals. We instantiate the framework with two existing DNA-based constructions (operable random DNA and Genomic Sequence Encryption) and derive quantitative bounds for robustness, unclonability, and unpredictability. Our analysis develops maximum-likelihood verification rules under sequencing noise and partial-edit models, and provides high-precision estimates based on binomial distributions to guide parameter selection. The framework, definitions, and analyses yield a reproducible methodology for designing chemically unclonable authentication mechanisms. We demonstrate applications to in-product authentication and to shared key generation using standard extraction techniques.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_14019
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Security Framework for Chemical Functions
Walter, Frederik
Narayanan, Hrishi
Bariffi, Jessica
Lüscher, Anne
Bitar, Rawad
Grass, Robert
Wachter-Zeh, Antonia
Yakhini, Zohar
Cryptography and Security
In this paper, we introduce chemical functions, a unified framework that models chemical systems as noisy challenge--response primitives, and formalize the associated chemical function infrastructure. Building on the theory of physical functions, we rigorously define robustness, unclonability, and unpredictability for chemical functions in both finite and asymptotic regimes, and specify security games that capture the adversary's power and the security goals. We instantiate the framework with two existing DNA-based constructions (operable random DNA and Genomic Sequence Encryption) and derive quantitative bounds for robustness, unclonability, and unpredictability. Our analysis develops maximum-likelihood verification rules under sequencing noise and partial-edit models, and provides high-precision estimates based on binomial distributions to guide parameter selection. The framework, definitions, and analyses yield a reproducible methodology for designing chemically unclonable authentication mechanisms. We demonstrate applications to in-product authentication and to shared key generation using standard extraction techniques.
title A Security Framework for Chemical Functions
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14019