Ultra Lightweight Multiple-Time Digital Signature for the Internet of Things Devices

Abstract

Digital signatures are basic cryptographic tools to provide authentication and integrity in the emerging ubiquitous systems in which resource-constrained devices are expected to operate securely and efficiently. However, existing digital signatures might not be fully practical for such resource-constrained devices (e.g., medical implants) that have energy limitations. Some other computationally efficient alternatives (e.g., one-time/multiple-time signatures) may introduce high memory and/or communication overhead due to large private key and signature sizes. In this paper, our contributions are two-fold: First, we develop a new lightweight multiple-time digital signature scheme called Signer Efficient Multiple-time Elliptic Curve Signature ( <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathtt {SEMECS}{}$</tex-math></inline-formula> ), which is suitable for resource-constrained embedded devices. <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathtt {SEMECS}{}$</tex-math></inline-formula> achieves optimal signature and private key sizes for an EC-based signature <i>without</i> requiring any EC operation (e.g., EC scalar multiplication or addition) at the signer. We prove <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathtt {SEMECS}{}$</tex-math></inline-formula> is secure (in random oracle model) with a tight security reduction. Second, we fully implemented <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathtt {SEMECS}{}$</tex-math></inline-formula> on 8-bit AVR microprocessor with a comprehensive energy consumption analysis and comparison. Our experiments confirm up to 19× less battery-consumption for <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathtt {SEMECS}{}$</tex-math></inline-formula> as compared to its fastest (full-time) counterpart, SchnorrQ, while offering significant performance advantages over its multiple-time counterparts in various fronts. We open-source our implementation for public testing and adoption.