Energy Efficient Lightweight Cryptography Algorithms for IoT Devices

Abstract

Over few decades, people have been working on providing security solutions, whereas attackers too have been working simultaneously. We present an evaluation of security algorithms, comparing performances and robustness. These comparisons are performed after hardware implementation and use crypt analysis. The targeted devices are wrist watches, RFID tags, IoT devices and others, which don't have a lot of areas (millions of gate equivalent). While performing this, the primary concern has been exploration of an algorithm that can work in these constrained limits. This led to a search for an algorithm that has low hardware footprints, low power consumption and better speed but at the same time implements adequate security. PRESENT has been found to be one such suitable algorithm. It has been also included in the new international standard for light-weight cryptographic methods under ISO/IEC 29192-2:2012 for its straight forward and light design. Our paper reports hardware implementation results of PRESENT, AES, ECDH, DH and RSA cryptography algorithms. We have implemented these algorithms with standard gate library of UMC-90 nm. Each algorithm has its own architecture and hence requires different crypt-analysis techniques like brute force, Pollard's Rho and biclique for “difficulty to break” measurement. It is a measure in term of time and data complexity of efforts required of a cryptographic attack. We have obtained $1.7\times$ improvement in area and $63\times$ improvement in power for modified PRESENT algorithm as compared to AES. It has also been observed that the proposed PRESENT algorithm has a time complexity of break attack as $2^{127}$ for 128 bit key length.

Keywords:

• Cryptography
• Crypt analysis
• Low power
• Hardware implementation
• Break attack
• Key length
• IoT

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge SMDP-C2SD project (ODRC No. 1000110086) funded by Ministry of Electronics & IT, Government of India for technical support.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tarun Kumar Goyal

Tarun Kumar Goyal obtained Bachelor of Engineering in electronics & communication engineering from University College of Engineering, Rajasthan Technical University, Kota, India and Master of Technology in embedded systems from MNIT Jaipur in 2016. He is currently working in Western Digital at Bengaluru, India. He has earlier served in Aricent Inc. and Mirafra Technologies, both in Bengaluru. His research interests are in the areas of VLSI Design especially design for test (DFT), cryptography.Email: [email protected]

Vineet Sahula

V Sahula (M'92-SM' 04, IEEE) obtained his bachelors in electronics (honours) from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India, in 1987 and masters in integrated electronics & circuits as well as PhD degree from Department of Electrical engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD) in 1989 and 2001, respectively. In 1990, he joined Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, as faculty member, where he is currently professor in the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering. He has 100+ research papers in reputed journals and conference proceedings to his credit. His research interests are into trust, integrity & resilience in hardware; machine learning & cognition modelling. Dr Sahula has served on the technical programme committees of the VLSI Conference and VLSI Design and Test Symposium, India, from 1998 to 2019 and as reviewer of many journals from ACM and IEEE. He has also served on organizing committee as fellowship chair of Embedded Systems Week in 2014 & of 22nd IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design, India, in 2009. He is a Senior member of IEEE, Fellow of IETE and IE, and member of ACM SIGDA, IMAPS and IET.Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Deepak Kumawat

Deepak Kumawat obtained Bachelor of Technology in electronics & communication engineering from Rajasthan Technical University, Kota, India and Master of Technology in VLSI design from MNIT Jaipur in 2016. He is currently working as an entrepreneur running a wireless home automation business. His research interests are in the areas of lightweight cryptography, system level design and modelling.Email: [email protected]