Composite Lightweight Authenticated Encryption Based on LED Block Cipher and PHOTON Hash Function for IoT Devices

Abstract

IoT devices are being used in different environments recently. They are mostly resource-constrained, and therefore, their data security is crucial. Several lightweight cryptographic primitives were proposed to overcome the limitations of the devices while maintaining moderate security levels. Such primitives provide either encryption or authentication. The encryption must be authenticated by a Message Authentication Code (MA C) or hash function for better overall security. Therefore, an architecture of integrated lightweight authenticated encryption (AE) based on LED block cipher and PHOTON hash function is presented. LED and PHOTON architectures were combined while exploiting area-performance trade-offs and utilizing the shared internal functions. The architecture is designed in Verilog HDL, synthesized in Altera Quartus II and simulated on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. The individual design of LED utilizes 357 logic elements (LE) and PHOTON utilizes 852 LE resulting in a total of 1209 LE. The logic utilization of the proposed shared architecture is 1046 LE. The results reveal that 13.5 % reduction in logic area is achieved compared to the independent implementations of LED and PHOTON.