Salted hashes for message authentication - proof of concept on tiny embedded systems

Abstract

Intelligent embedded systems become more and more widespread. Especially in the field of smart environments, such as smart homes, the systems are communicating with each other. If wireless communication is used, security becomes important. This paper explores to what extent salted hashes might be used on tiny embedded systems to provide message authentication. To this end, this paper uses two very different microcontrollers for calculating salted hases using SHA-1 and SHA-256. The execution times vary between 2.5 and 160 milliseconds, which is fast enough to provide user responses in time.