RNG Entropy Enrichment to Improve Cybersecurity in IoT and Cloud Services

Abstract

Compliance with cybersecurity demands is a necessity for the harmlessness and certainty of IoT devices and applications, infrastructures, and the protection of confidential data. The quality of cryptographic security in cloud services is key to IoT security. A variety of vital IoT applications rely on random numbers. The random number generators (RNG) used in many IoT devices have a serious fundamental weakness that challenges the security of the encryption keys they generate for communications. In this regard, the topics of cryptography and sufficiently robust random number creation, which are the basis of any encryption system, are of particular interest. This study seeks to answer a question which has been worrying many researchers long ago, namely how predictable and vulnerable an RNG is in a computer system that provides IoT cloud services. The quality of an array of random numbers was investigated by simulations. The consideration of the presented results concludes that due to the inefficiency in the random numbers and the established breaking of cryptographic defense, the IoT-based cloud service can happen to be a victim of various types of hacker attacks. The ways to improve the quality of the generator, both software and hardware, are indicated.