Performance Analysis of Encryption Capabilities of ARM-based Single Board Microcomputers

Abstract

In the few years since the Raspberry Pi was released in 2012, countless microcomputers based on the ARM architecture have been introduced.Their small size, high performance relative to their power consumption, and the ability to run the popular Linux operating system make them ideal for a wide range of tasks. Information security is an area of particular importance. Different encryption and encoding algorithms play an important role in almost all areas of information security. However, these algorithms are very computationally intensive, so it is important to investigate which microcomputers can be used for these tasks, and under which trade-offs. The performance of ten different microcomputers is investigated and presented for the application of common symmetric and public-key encryption and decryption, digest creation and message authentication protocols, such as RSA, AES, HMAC, MD5, SHA. Reliable encryption requires the generation of reliable (pseudo)random numbers (Cryptographically Secure Random Numbers, CSRN), and microcomputers based on ARM SoCs usually have hardware implemented (pseudo)random number generators. The applicability of the random number generat er generators. The applicability of the random number generators of different microcomputers are investigated and presented; test methoods are described , and recommendations are made.