ITUbee: A software oriented lightweight block cipher

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a software oriented lightweight block cipher, ITUbee. The cipher is especially suitable for resource constrained devices including an 8-bit microcontroller such as sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks. For a sensor node one of the most important constraints is the low energy consumption because of the limited battery power. Also, the memory on sensor nodes are restricted. We have simulated the performance of ITUbee in the AVR ATtiny45 microcontroller using the integrated development platform Atmel Studio 6. We have evaluated the memory usage and clock cycles needed for an encryption. The number of clock cycles gives a metric for energy consumption. The simulation results show that ITUbee is a competitive block cipher on 8-bit software platforms in terms of energy consumption. Also, less memory requirement of the cipher is remarkable. In addition, we have shown that the attacks which are effective on software oriented lightweight block ciphers can not reduce the 80-bit security level of ITUbee. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.