Cryptography in Modern Communication Systems
Daniel V. Bailey, W. Cammack, Jorge Guajardo, Christof Paar · 1999
It is widely recognized that data security will play a central role in the design of future IT systems. Many of those IT applications will be realized as embedded systems which rely heavily on security mechanisms. Examples include security for wireless phones, wireless computing, pay-TV, and copy protection schemes for audio/video consumer products and digital cinemas. Note that a large share of those embedded applications will be wireless, which makes the communication channel especially vulnerable. An important part of almost all modern security protocols is public-key algorithms. Such algorithms are extremely computationally intensive and therefore, the arithmetic capabilities o ered by DSPs are a very good match for them. This contribution introduces several important cryptographic concepts and their relevance to DSPs and embedded system applications. We give an overview of the previous work in the area of DSPs and cryptography. In addition, we present the design and features of the comprehensive cryptographic library SecuriTI. The library is currently under development and it was designed to provide an e cient algorithm agile cryptographic environment for the TMS320C54x and TMS320C6x DSPs. The library includes most public-key and symmetric-key algorithms of practical importance and it will be an important tool to support real-world applications and protocols. 1