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The Internet of Things (IoT) will soon penetrate every aspect of human life. Several threats and vulnerabilities are present due to the different devices and protocols used in an IoT system. Conventional cryptographic primitives or algorithms cannot run efficiently and are unsuitable for resource-constrained devices in IoT. Hence, a recently developed area of cryptography, known as lightweight cryptography, has been introduced, and over the years, numerous lightweight algorithms have been suggested. This paper gives a comprehensive overview of the lightweight cryptography field and considers various popular lightweight cryptographic algorithms proposed and evaluated over the past years for analysis. Different taxonomies of the algorithms and other associated concepts were also provided, which helps new researchers gain a quick overview of the field. Finally, a set of 11 selected ultra-lightweight algorithms are analyzed based on the software implementations, and their evaluation is carried out using different metrics.

There are many emerging areas in which highly constrained devices are interconnected and communicated to accomplish some tasks. Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) enables many low resources and constrained devices to communicate, compute process and make decision in the communication network. In the heterogeneous environments for IoT, there are many challenges and issues like power consumption of devices, limited battery, memory space, performance cost, and security in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) network. In this paper, we discuss a state-of-art of lightweight cryptographic primitives which include lightweight block ciphers, hash function, stream ciphers, high performance system, and low resources device for IoT environment in details. We analyze many lightweight cryptographic algorithms based on their key size, block size, number of rounds, and structures. In addition, we discuss the security architecture in IoT for constrained device environment, and focus on research challenges, issues and solutions. Finally, a proposed security scheme with a service scenario for an improvement of resource constrained IoT environment and open issues are discussed.

Due to the recent advances in the domain of smart agriculture as a result of integrating traditional agriculture and the latest information technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI), there is an urgent need to address the information security-related issues and challenges in this field. In this article, we propose the integration of lightweight cryptography techniques into the IoT ecosystem for smart agriculture to meet the requirements of resource-constrained IoT devices. Moreover, we investigate the adoption of a lightweight encryption protocol, namely, the Expeditious Cipher (X-cipher), to create a secure channel between the sensing layer and the broker in the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol as well as a secure channel between the broker and its subscribers. Our case study focuses on smart irrigation systems, and the MQTT protocol is deployed as the application messaging protocol in these systems. Smart irrigation strives to decrease the misuse of natural resources by enhancing the efficiency of agricultural irrigation. This secure channel is utilized to eliminate the main security threat in precision agriculture by protecting sensors’ published data from eavesdropping and theft, as well as from unauthorized changes to sensitive data that can negatively impact crops’ development. In addition, the secure channel protects the irrigation decisions made by the data analytics (DA) entity regarding the irrigation time and the quantity of water that is returned to actuators from any alteration. Performance evaluation of our chosen lightweight encryption protocol revealed an improvement in terms of power consumption, execution time, and required memory usage when compared with the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Moreover, the selected lightweight encryption protocol outperforms the PRESENT lightweight encryption protocol in terms of throughput and memory usage.

In the Internet of Things (IoT), a lot of constrained devices are interconnected. The data collected from those devices can be the target of cyberattacks. In this paper, a lightweight cryptosystem that can be efficiently implemented in highly constrained IOT devices is proposed. The algorithm is mainly based on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and a new chaotic S-box. Since its adoption by the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, AES in embedded platforms have been increasingly used. The main cryptographic properties of the generated S-box have been validated. The randomness of the generated S-box has been confirmed by the NIST tests. Experimental results and security analysis demonstrated that the cryptosystem can, on the one hand, reach good encryption results and respects the limitation of the sensor’s resources, on the other hand. So the proposed solution could be reliably applied in image encryption and secure communication between networked smart objects.

In this paper, we propose a new lightweight block cipher named RECTANGLE. The main idea of the design of RECTANGLE is to allow lightweight and fast implementations using bit-slice techniques. RECTANGLE uses an SP-network. The substitution layer consists of 16 4×4 S-boxes in parallel. The permutation layer is composed of 3 rotations. As shown in this paper, RECTANGLE offers great performance in both hardware and software environment, which provides enough flexibility for different application scenario. The following are 3 main advantages of RECTANGLE. First, RECTANGLE is extremely hardware-friendly. For the 80-bit key version, a one-cycle-per-round parallel implementation only needs 1600 gates for a throughput of 246 Kbits/s at 100 kHz clock and an energy efficiency of 3.0 pJ/bit. Second, RECTANGLE achieves a very competitive software speed among the existing lightweight block ciphers due to its bit-slice style. Using 128-bit SSE instructions, a bit-slice implementation of RECTANGLE reaches an average encryption speed of about 3.9 cycles/byte for messages around 3000 bytes. Last but not least, we propose new design criteria for the RECTANGLE S-box. Due to our careful selection of the S-box and the asymmetric design of the permutation layer, RECTANGLE achieves a very good security-performance tradeoff. Our extensive and deep security analysis shows that the highest number of rounds that we can attack, is 18 (out of 25).

In the current digital environment, safeguarding visual data from unauthorized use remains a substantial challenge. Sensitive imagery, including biometric, medical and defence images, represents a frequent target of destructive cyberattacks. Although conventional visual cryptography approaches achieve satisfactory results in rendering visual content unreadable, these schemes often present serious drawbacks that include excessive computation, pixel expansion and reduced reconstruction quality. This paper suggests a new method and concept of lightweight visual cryptography based on the use of bitwise operations (specifically XOR) for secured colour image sharing. This methodology employs three non-expansible shares while providing the user with lossless encryption and low computation in addition to strong statistical and differential attack resistance during encryption and decryption. The proposed method utilizes a cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator (CSPRNG) and reversible XOR bitwise operations to determine and generate three unique unreadable shares. Tests and experiments reveal that the resulting shares have high reconstruction quality (PSNR > 40 dB), an ideal degree of randomness (entropy ≈ 7.997) and tolerable processing time (in comparison to traditional XOR-, polynomial- and CRT- based visual cryptography schemes). The new method and concept emphasize the merging of simplicity, scalability, and robustness in a computationally sound and secure solution for real-time use in areas such as military imaging, biometric authentication, and multi-media communication.

The vast interconnection of resource-constrained devices and the immense amount of data exchange in the Internet of Things (IoT) environment resulted in the resurgence of various security threats. This resource-constrained environment of IoT makes data security a very challenging task. Recent trends in integrating lightweight cryptographic algorithms have significantly improved data security in the IoT without affecting performance. The PRESENT block cipher, a standard and lightweight benchmark algorithm, is a widely accepted and implemented algorithm with a simple design, low-cost implementation, and optimum performance. However, this simple design utilizing lightweight linear and non-linear functions led to slow confusion and diffusion properties. The static bits in the permutation layer are the leading cause of slow diffusion, showcasing dependencies between plaintext and ciphertext bits. This research addresses and seeks to overcome this shortcoming of slow confusion and diffusion using the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) replication process and shift-aided operations, leading to the DNA-PRESENT block cipher. Security, cost, and performance analyses were performed to verify the improvements. The results demonstrated that with only 33.5% additional cost, DNA-PRESENT increased key sensitivity to 73.57%, plaintext sensitivity to 33%, and consistently ensured an average bit error rate (BER) of 50.2%. An evident increase of 176.47 kb/s in throughput and reduced latency to 17 cycles/block kept the good hardware efficiency of 43.41 kbps/KGE, and the reduction in execution time by 0.2333 s led to better performance. Considering the security advances achieved, this cost increase is a trade-off between security and performance.

The increasing number of internet of things (IoT) devices, wearable technologies, and embedded systems has experienced a significant increase in recent years. This surge has brought attention to the necessity for cryptographic algorithms that are lightweight and capable of providing security in resource-constrained environments. The primary objective of lightweight block ciphers is to provide encryption capabilities with minimal computational overhead and decreased power consumption. As a result, they are particularly well-suited for use on devices that have limited resources. At the same time, machine learning methodologies have evolved into powerful mechanisms for the purposes of prediction, categorization, and system optimization. This study introduces a challenges and issues involved in integrating machine learning techniques with the development of lightweight block ciphers.

This research paper presents a study on designing and implementing a robust key management scheme for lightweight block ciphers in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. Key management is a critical concern for IoT devices due to their limited resources and susceptibility to security threats. The proposed scheme utilises partial key pre-distribution to achieve lightweight and secure key management. The protocol’s security has been analysed against various attacks, demonstrating its resistance. Performance evaluation results indicate that the proposed key management technique is suitable for resource-constraint IoT networks, as it reduces communication overhead, power consumption, and storage space requirements. The methodology employed in this research includes designing and implementing the proposed key management scheme and conducting scenario-based analyses of its functionality. The results affirm that the proposed solution effectively ensures secure communication in IoT networks. Overall, this research contributes to developing a secure and efficient key management scheme for lightweight block ciphers in IoT networks.