Software Implementation and Analysis of Low Cost Hash Functions

Abstract

The need for light-weight cryptographic algorithms has been increasing in recent times with the birth of RFID-enabled Internet of Things (IoT). The main challenge everyone faces when designing security protocols for RFID systems is the resource constrained environment in which these cryptographic algorithms have to be deployed. These resources include the limited memory and processing capabilities, limited power supply and short range of operation. The higher the memory offered, the costlier the system gets. Traditional cryptographic algorithms developed so far are rendered useless in such an environment and new algorithms have to be developed from scratch keeping in mind the limited resources available. Many such security protocols have been proposed which often assume that a hash function is present inside the RFID-tag. These hash algorithms form an additional overhead to the processing and hence several low cost functions have been researched. Two of such functions are PHOTON and SPONGENT which were primarily hardware oriented designs based on the hermetic sponge construction. The present work involves implementation of these two hardware designs in software to be deployed on to the RFID tags and analyzing these implementations.