Cryptographic system for data applications, in the context of internet of things

Abstract

With each passing day, Internet of Things (IoT), has the potential to transform our society to a more digital way. In this paper, a cryptographic system is proposed, which has been designed and implemented, following the IoT optimized technologies. As the benefits of IoT are numerous, the need for a privacy platform is more than necessary to be developed. This work aims to demonstrate this by, firstly, implementing efficient and flexible, the fundamentals primitives of cryptography and privacy. Secondly, this is achieved, by introducing applied cryptography, in a more interactive and flexible approach. The proposed system and the incorporation of this platform is scrutinized. In the context of this work, an application of symmetric cryptography is introduced, based on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in Electronic Code Book (ECB), Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) and Counter (CTR) modes of operation, for both encryption and decryption of texts, images and electronic data applications. In addition two other security schemes are supported by the proposed system: AES Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and AES Galois Message Authentication Code (GMAC). The GCM proposed integration, in an authentication scheme, designed to provide authenticity and confidentiality, at the same time. On the other hand, GMAC, can be applied as message authentication code. Both operations, are optimized in sense of implementation resources, since the major cost is targeted to AES core. In addition, based on the integrated hardware modules, user registration and validation is proposed and implemented, with no additional cost, and with no performance penalty. Furthermore, two factor authentication has been designed and proposed, based on One Time Passwords (OTP), which can been produced with a random procedure. After these, a reference to the security levels, as regards to the communication between the IoT layers of the architecture, is presented. IoT hardware platforms are facing lack of security level and this brings the opportunity to use advanced security mechanisms. Implementation comparison results emphasize the importance of testing and measuring the performance of the alternative encryption algorithms, supported by hardware platforms.