ASCON: A NEW ERA IN LIGHTWEIGHT CRYPTOGRAPHY
Anil Wurity, L. Sumalatha · 2024
This chapter focuses on the Ascon encryption algorithm which is a lightweight cryptographic protocol that has been designed specifically to suit the environments that have limited resources such as the internet of things devices and the embedded systems. The analysis was conducted on Ascon-128, Ascon-128a, and Ascon-80pq variants, highlighting their appropriateness for the different security and operational necessities. The main performance metrics such as encryption and decryption timings, memory consumption, and throughput were measured on the various data sizes (1KB, 10KB, 100KB, and 1000KB). From this analysis, it was very clear that Ascon performs very consistently and also efficiently in both the encryption and decryption regardless of the data size, and as such, it can be relied upon easily in systems where consistent processing time is an important consideration. The study also found that the memory usage during decryption was consistently higher than it was during encryption; this factor needs to be considered for memory-sensitive applications. As for the throughput, the algorithm has demonstrated better results in the decryption of the smaller files and encryption of the larger files. To conclude, the Ascon algorithm is lightweight and very efficient, which makes it a suitable choice for the constrained environments.