INLEC: An involutive and low energy lightweight block cipher for internet of things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a pivotal force in the global technological revolution and industrial transformation. Despite its advancements, IoT devices continue to face significant security challenges, particularly during data transmission, and are often constrained by limited battery life and energy resources. To address these challenges, a low energy lightweight block cipher (INLEC) is proposed to mitigate data leakage in IoT devices. In addition, the Structure and Components INvolution (SCIN) design is introduced. It is constructed using two similar round functions to achieve front–back symmetry. This design ensures coherence throughout the INLEC encryption and decryption processes and addresses the increased resource consumption during the decryption phase in Substitution Permutation Networks (SPN). Furthermore, a low area S-box is generated through a hardware gate-level circuit search method combined with Genetic Programming (GP). This optimization leads to a 47.02% reduction in area compared to the $S_0$ of Midori, using UMC $0.18\mu m$ technology. Moreover, a chaotic function is used to generate the optimal nibble-based involutive permutation, further enhancing its efficiency. In terms of performs, the energy consumption for both encryption and decryption with INLEC is 6.88 $\mu$J/bit, representing 25.21% reduction compared to Midori. Finally, INLEC is implemented using STM32L475 PanDuoLa and Nexys A7 FPGA development boards, establishing an encryption platform for IoT devices. This platform provides functions for data acquisition, transmission, and encryption.