Implementing identity-based key agreement in embedded devices

Abstract

In recent years, a substantial work has been devoted to the design of cryptographic protocols with reduced computational load and power consumption. However, implementations are scarce, especially in case of embedded devices. In this paper, we discuss the implementation over elliptic curves of a two-party key agreement protocol for the Raspberry PI platform. The protocol requires just one round to derive an (implicit) authenticated session key, and it makes use of identity-based cryptography, which fits very well some application scenarios, allowing for more efficiency than the certificate-based approach. Our implementation takes advantage of the portability and security features of the Java programming language and, due to a modular design, it can be easily extended to encompass other identity-based schemes and protocols. We run a set of tests in order to verify the correctness of our implementation and to measure its performances in term of computing time. Our results demonstrate that getting secure communications using low cost, resource constrained devices is viable to the point that it can be used for real world applications.