Lightweight Crypto and Security
Lo’ai Tawalbeh, Hala Tawalbeh · 2017
Securing the transmitted information is becoming as important as delivering the information efficiently without extra delays. Here comes the trade-off between security and performance, which is claimed to be solved by using lightweight cryptography (LWC). LWC is becoming a very popular topic motivated by the need for security algorithms that can be executed on resource-constrained devices such as wireless sensor networks, RFID tags, smart grids, and cyber-physical systems. Lightweight crypto aims at providing high level of security using lowest computing power possible. There are many proposed lightweight stream-ciphers, block-ciphers, and hash functions, but still there is no standardization of lightweight primitives yet. In this chapter, we introduce the LWC in more depth and how it can be used to provide security and privacy for cyber-physical systems and constrained devices, and the motivation behind the increasing demand for such type of ciphers. Also, we address important issues related to LWC and the requirements and characteristics of real-world applications of LWC. Moreover, we present and compare existing SW and HW implementations of current lightweight symmetric, asymmetric, and hash functions, and evaluate the threats and possible attacks on LWC.