Title: Lightweight integrated cryptosystem based on reconfigurable hardware for IoT security

Authors: Abiy Tadesse Abebe; Yalemzewd Negash Shiferaw; P.G.V. Suresh Kumar

Addresses: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 385, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia ' School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 385, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia ' Ethiopian Technical University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract: Small footprint security protocols are essential for trustworthy information exchanges in IoT network. Cryptography is a crucial security technique, but a single algorithm is insufficient to address the security requirements. Moreover, it is important to scale existing complex cryptosystems considering the resource, performance and security requirements of applications. In this research, lightweight and efficient cryptographic architectures are proposed and implemented based on FPGA targeting IoT security. The major contributions include FPGA-based small footprint architecture for an authenticated encryption algorithm, efficient and lightweight architecture for elliptic curve point multiplication of ECC, and an integrated cryptosystem architecture using only two algorithms with robust security, reduced hardware complexity, less space, and minimised key management and key storage issues. It involves prevention techniques against attacks including side-channel attacks. Compared to existing outcomes, 55% reduction of slices utilisation for the integrated system, 15% and 15.7% throughput improvements for ECC and ASCON implementations, respectively, are achieved.

Keywords: authenticated encryption with associated data; AEAD; BRAM; DSP slices; ECC; fog-based IoT; FPGA; information security; integrated cryptosystem; IoT security; lightweight cryptography.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2023.135895

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2023 Vol.22 No.3/4, pp.323 - 353

Received: 22 Mar 2022
Accepted: 13 Jul 2022
Published online: 09 Jan 2024 *

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