An Effective Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithm to Secure Resource-Constrained Devices

In recent years, small computing devices like embedded devices, wireless sensors, RFID tags (Radio Frequency Identification), Internet of Things (IoT) devices are increasing rapidly. They are expected to generate massive amount of sensitive data for controlling and monitoring purposes. But their resources and capabilities are limited. Those also work with valuable private data thus making security of those devices of paramount importance. Therefore, a secure encryption algorithm should be there to protect those vulnerable devices. Conventional encryption ciphers like RSA or AES are computationally expensive; require large memory but hinder performances of those devices. Simple encryption techniques, on the other hand are easy to crack, compromising security. In this paper a secure and efficient lightweight cryptographic algorithm for small computing devices has been proposed. It is a symmetric key block cipher, employing custom substitution-permutation (SP) network and a modified Feistel architecture. Two basic concepts from Genetic algorithm are used. A Linux based benchmark tool, FELICS is used for the measurement and MATLAB for the purpose of encryption quality testing. An improvement over the existing algorithm, the proposed algorithm reduces the use of processing cycles but at the same time provides sufficient security.