LBC-IoT: Lightweight Block Cipher for IoT Constraint Devices

Abstract

With the new era of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, many devices with limited resources are utilized. Those devices are susceptible to a significant number of new malware and other risks emerging rapidly. One of the most appropriate methods for securing those IoT applications is cryptographic algorithms, as cryptography masks information by eliminating the risk of collecting any meaningful information patterns. This ensures that all data communications are private, accurate, authenticated, authorized, or non-repudiated. Since conventional cryptographic algorithms have been developed specifically for devices with limited resources; however, it turns out that such algorithms are not ideal for IoT restricted devices with their current configuration. Therefore, lightweight block ciphers are gaining popularity to meet the requirements of low-power and constrained devices. A new ultra-lightweight secret-key block-enciphering algorithm named “LBC-IoT” is proposed in this paper. The proposed block length is 32-bit supporting key lengths of 80-bit, and it is mainly based on the Feistel structure. Energy-efficient cryptographic features in “LBC-IoT” include the use of simple functions (shift, XOR) and small rigid substitution boxes (4-bit-S-boxes). Besides, it is immune to different types of attacks such as linear, differential, and side-channel as well as flexible in terms of implementation. Moreover, LBC-IoT achieves reasonable performance in both hardware and software compared to other recent algorithms. LBC-IoT’s hardware implementation results are very promising (smallest ever area “548” GE) and competitive with today’s leading lightweight ciphers. LBC-IoT is also ideally suited for ultra-restricted devices such as RFID tags.