Lightweight S-Box Architecture for Secure Internet of Things

A Prathiba,V Bhaaskaran

doi:10.3390/info9010013

Abstract

Lightweight cryptographic solutions are required to guarantee the security of Internet of Things (IoT) pervasiveness. Cryptographic primitives mandate a non-linear operation. The design of a lightweight, secure, non-linear 4 × 4 substitution box (S-box) suited to Internet of Things (IoT) applications is proposed in this work. The structure of the 4 × 4 S-box is devised in the finite fields GF (24) and GF ((22)2). The finite field S-box is realized by multiplicative inversion followed by an affine transformation. The multiplicative inverse architecture employs Euclidean algorithm for inversion in the composite field GF ((22)2). The affine transformation is carried out in the field GF (24). The isomorphic mapping between the fields GF (24) and GF ((22)2) is based on the primitive element in the higher order field GF (24). The recommended finite field S-box architecture is combinational and enables sub-pipelining. The linear and differential cryptanalysis validates that the proposed S-box is within the maximal security bound. It is observed that there is 86.5% lesser gate count for the realization of sub field operations in the composite field GF ((22)2) compared to the GF (24) field. In the PRESENT lightweight cipher structure with the basic loop architecture, the proposed S-box demonstrates 5% reduction in the gate equivalent area over the look-up-table-based S-box with TSMC 180 nm technology.

Highlights

Cryptography paves the way for the realization of security in the information technology era.Lightweight cryptographic algorithms are in immense demand in the present decade for Internet of Things (IoT) applications
The finite field substitution box (S-box) is realized by multiplicative inversion followed by an affine transformation
In the PRESENT lightweight cipher structure with the basic loop architecture, the proposed S-box demonstrates 5% reduction in the gate equivalent area over the look-up-table-based S-box with TSMC

Summary

Introduction

Cryptography paves the way for the realization of security in the information technology era.Lightweight cryptographic algorithms are in immense demand in the present decade for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Industrial IoT systems are ubiquitous in nature and have widespread access through smart devices. They are strictly resource-constrained, and lightweight security solutions are the most suitable option for the security of such systems. The traditional security algorithms, such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), are not suitable for IoT devices due to their intense mathematical operations, which are computationally expensive. IoT physical security concerns emphasize the resource constraints and the level of security to be addressed by the lightweight cryptographic algorithms and lightweight cryptographic primitives [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The necessity of lightweight ciphers with compact implementation of the non-linear S-box to realize the practical IoT is addressed in [7,8,9]

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Results

Conclusion