In embodiments, an apparatus for microcontroller (μC) or system-on-chip (SoC) computing includes a set of fuses disposed in a μC or a SoC to store a seed value and M pairs of loop counter values (LCVs) with which to locally generate M private keys from the seed value on the microcontroller or SoC, where M is a positive integer, each private key to decrypt data encrypted with a pre-defined public key cryptosystem, wherein each private key includes two prime numbers p and q (p,q), the LCVs being a number of iterations of a key derivation function (KDF) needed to respectively obtain p and q from the seed value; and a key decoder, disposed in the (μC) or the SoC, and coupled to the set of fuses, to read the seed value and the M pairs of LCVs, and, for each of the M private keys to: respectively generate (p,q) from the seed value by respectively iterating the KDF by the LCVs for that key.