Evaluation of lightweight block ciphers for embedded systems

Abstract

Ubiquitous Computing and the Internet of Things are two paradigms which have gained a lot of popularity lately. They are based on a multitude of low power devices which usually communicate through wireless connections. To avoid security and reliability problems, efficient cryptographic algorithms must be used for authentication, key exchange and message encryption. Due to the wide range of such algorithms and their characteristics, some ciphers are more suitable for implementation on certain platforms than others. In this paper we propose solutions for the implementation and evaluation of block ciphers on 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers. We focus on widely used algorithms such as AES (the tinyAES implementation), as well as others which are suitable for embedded platforms, such as the Simon and Speck family of block ciphers. The conclusions of this paper are drawn based on the performance and energy efficiency of each algorithm.