Developing and Evaluating Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithms for Secure Embedded Systems in IoT Devices

Abstract: The high rate of development of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has brought to attention new challenges in the area of data security, especially within the resource-limited realm of RFID tags, sensors, and embedded systems. Traditional cryptographic implementations can be of inappropriate computational complexity and energy usage and hence are not suitable on these platforms. This paper examines the design, implementation, and testing of lightweight cryptographic algorithms that have been specifically designed to be used in secure embedded systems. A comparison of some of the state-of-the-art lightweight encryption algorithms, that is PRESENT, SPECK, and SIMON, focuses on the main performance indicators, i.e., throughput, use of memory, and energy utilization. The study presents novel lightweight algorithms that are founded upon the Feistel-network architecture and their safety under cryptanalytic attacks, e.g., differential and linear cryptanalysis. The proposed solutions are proven through hardware implementation on the FPGA platform. The results have shown that lightweight cryptography is an effective strategy that could be used to establish security and maintain performance in the IoT and other resource-limited settings.