Lightweight

Cryptography for IoT

by Yosi Hendarsjah
What is Internet of Things?

 It’s basically collection of devices that are connected to the Internet and
communicate with other devices.
 The term was coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999.
 A Coke vending machine at Carnegie Mellon U. is considered as the first IoT
device (1982).
IoT Applications

 Smart Homes
 Wearables
 Retail
 Smart Cities
 Healthcare
 Transportation
 Industry
Why Lightweight Cryptography

Typical IoT devices are resource-constrained. They generally have

 lower computational power,
 smaller memory size,
 lower power consumption,
 smaller physical size,
 lower price
than full-fledged devices such as PCs, laptops, or tablets. We need cryptography
algorithms that have small footprints and consume low power without sacrificing
security.
ISO/IEC 29192

 Is about standards on lightweight cryptography.

 Lightweight cryptography is classified by a combination of the constraints on
chip area, energy consumption, program code and RAM size, communication
bandwidth, and execution time.
 Defines 80 bits security as the minimum security strength for lightweight
cryptography.
 Specifies a number of block ciphers, stream ciphers, and hash functions as
standards.
 Not yet completed. Work still in progress for standards on MAC.
Block Ciphers

 Block ciphers specified by ISO/IEC 29192:

 PRESENT: 64 bits block size and 80 or 128 bits key size
 CLEFIA: 128 bits block size and 128, 192, and 256 bits key size
 SIMON: 48 – 128 bits block size, 96 – 256 bits key size
 SPECK: 48 – 128 bits block size, 96 – 256 bits key size
PRESENT Block Cipher

 Designed for some very specific applications for which AES is unsuitable.
 Designed to conform these characteristics:
 To be implemented on hardware
 For applications that only need moderate security level
 For applications that unlikely to encrypt large amount of data
 Where physical size, power consumption, and execution time are the primary
concerns (after security).
 For some applications it is possible that the key will be fixed at the time when the
device is manufactured.
 For some applications the cipher will be used to perform encryption only.
 Hardware implementation of PRESENT has much higher throughput and requires
a half of gates compared to the implementation of AES with similar key size.
SIMON and SPECK Block Ciphers

 Flexible secure block ciphers, can perform well on any platform.

 64-256 bits key size, 32-128 bits block size
 SIMON is more hardware oriented, SPECK is more software oriented.
 Hardware implementation requires less gates than other algorithms.
Stream Ciphers

 ISO/IEC 29192 specifies two stream ciphers:

 Enocoro: 80 or 128 bits key size
 Trivium: 80 bits key size
 Both of them are hardware oriented.
 The literatures do not really explain much about why these algorithms are
considered ‘lightweight’ and do not compare them to other algorithms.
Hash Functions

 ISO/IEC 29192 specifies three hash functions:

 PHOTON: permutation size 100-288 bits and output size 80-256 bits
 SPONGENT: permutation size 88-272 bits and output size 88-256 bits
 Lesamnta-LW: permutation size 384 bits and outputs size 256 bits
SPONGENT Hash Function

 Five different hash sizes: 88, 128, 160, 224, 256

 Three types pre-image and second pre-image security level:
1. Full pre-image and second pre-image security level
2. Reduced second pre-image security level
3. Reduced pre-image and second pre-image security level
Lesamnta-LW Hash Function

 Lightweight 256 bits hash function

 Has collision, pre-image, and second pre-image security level of at least 2 120.
 Hardware implementation only requires 8240 gates.
 Software implementation only requires 50 bytes of RAM and runs fast on short
messages on 8-bit CPUs.
Comparison

 Cryptography algorithms designed for IoT are ‘lightweight’ because:

 Designed specifically for constrained devices such as RFID tags and networked
sensors (hardware oriented).
 Have several security levels that are sufficient to different types of applications.
 Designed to process only small amount of data.

 Existing popular cryptography algorithms are ‘heavy’ because:

 Designed as general-purpose algorithms.
 Generally software-oriented.
 High security level.
 Can process large amount of data.
The End

 Questions?