Survey and Benchmark of Block Ciphers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Cryptographic algorithms play an important role in the security architecture of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Choosing the most storage- and energy-efficient block cipher is essential, due to the facts that these networks are meant to operate without human intervention for a long period of time with little energy supply, and that available storage is scarce on these sensor nodes. However, to our knowledge, no systematic work has been done in this area so far.We construct an evaluation framework in which we first identify the candidates of block ciphers suitable for WSNs, based on existing literature and authoritative recommendations. For evaluating and assessing these candidates, we not only consider the security properties but also the storage- and energy-efficiency of the candidates. Finally, based on the evaluation results, we select the most suitable ciphers for WSNs, namely Skipjack, MISTY1, and Rijndael, depending on the combination of available memory and required security (energy efficiency being implicit). In terms of operation mode, we recommend Output Feedback Mode for pairwise links but Cipher Block Chaining for group communications

KLEIN: A New Family of Lightweight Block Ciphers

Resource-efficient cryptographic primitives become fundamental for realizing both security and efficiency in embedded systems like RFID tags and sensor nodes. Among those primitives, lightweight block cipher plays a major role as a building block for security protocols. In this paper, we describe a new family of lightweight block ciphers named KLEIN, which is designed for resource-constrained devices such as wireless sensors and RFID tags. Compared to the related proposals, KLEIN has advantage in the software performance on legacy sensor platforms, while in the same time its hardware implementation can also be compact

Lightweight block ciphers: A comparative study

Although the AES is an excellent and preferred choice for almost all block cipher applications, it is not suitable for extremely constrained environments such as RFID (Radio-Frequency IDentification) tags and sensor networks. Therefore lightweight cryptography has become very vital and a strong demand in designing secure lightweight cryptographic modules is required. This paper meant to be a reference (for the cryptographic designers) on the lightweight block ciphers. It starts by doing a survey to collect the latest proposed ciphers, then to study them in terms of their algorithms specifications, hardware implementation and attacks. Finally, after the explanation and comparison, this research can be the basement for starting point to improve the lightweight block cipher in many directions like number of clock cycle, size of memory, number of Chosen Plaintext, GE, throughput and attacks. Also, this paper is under our investigatio

Systematization of a 256-bit lightweight block cipher Marvin

In a world heavily loaded by information, there is a great need for keeping specific information secure from adversaries. The rapid growth in the research field of lightweight cryptography can be seen from the list of the number of lightweight stream as well as block ciphers that has been proposed in the recent years. This paper focuses only on the subject of lightweight block ciphers. In this paper, we have proposed a new 256 bit lightweight block cipher named as Marvin, that belongs to the family of Extended LS designs.Comment: 12 pages,6 figure

A Review on Biological Inspired Computation in Cryptology

Cryptology is a field that concerned with cryptography and cryptanalysis. Cryptography, which is a key technology in providing a secure transmission of information, is a study of designing strong cryptographic algorithms, while cryptanalysis is a study of breaking the cipher. Recently biological approaches provide inspiration in solving problems from various fields. This paper reviews major works in the application of biological inspired computational (BIC) paradigm in cryptology. The paper focuses on three BIC approaches, namely, genetic algorithm (GA), artificial neural network (ANN) and artificial immune system (AIS). The findings show that the research on applications of biological approaches in cryptology is minimal as compared to other fields. To date only ANN and GA have been used in cryptanalysis and design of cryptographic primitives and protocols. Based on similarities that AIS has with ANN and GA, this paper provides insights for potential application of AIS in cryptology for further research