Comparison between PKI (RSA-AES) and AEAD (AES-EAX PSK) cryptography systems for use in SMS-based secure transmissions

Abstract

In today's mobile communication systems, security offered by the network operator is often limited to the wireless link. This means that data delivered through mobile networks are not sufficiently protected. In the particular growing field of interest of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, these applications typically require a mobile, secure and reliable means of data communication. This paper compared two (2) cryptographic mechanisms, the RSA-AES and the AES-EAX PSK which provide end-to-end security for SMS-based transmission. We implemented these two (2) mechanisms assuming the constraints of standard SMS network and measured their performance in terms of transaction time. Our study indicated that in terms of processing time, the Authenticated Encryption and Associate Data (AEAD) modes represented by EAX performed better even when the digital signature of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) mode represented by RSA was not included. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.