Chapter 8 - Lightweight cryptographic algorithms for resource-constrained IoT devices and sensor networks

Abstract

Over the past few years, Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged because of advancing research and practical applications. IoT is a system of enabling devices for communication and computing process through the Internet. It integrates devices and sensor nodes in the communication network. The smart chips and sensors transmit important data deployed on the physical objects in IoT, which are present in the environment everywhere. The exchange of information interconnects the devices. The transfer of information must be safe and secured in the IoT platform. Cryptography plays an important role for secure data communication. This is because it protects the information and assures the message integrity and authentication. Nowadays, security and privacy have been a major concern with the evolution of IoT devices and sensor networks. These devices have limited resources in terms of area, power, and memory. It has become a challenging task to secure resource-constrained devices in IoT, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes, etc. Therefore, lightweight cryptographic algorithms have been developed to provide adequate security in such devices. The hardware implementation of these algorithms cannot be easily modified or read by an intruder. Hence, it offers more physically secure implementation by nature. In this chapter, three architectures of KLEIN lightweight cryptographic algorithm are proposed, and FPGA implementation is performed by using Spartan and Virtex families.