SIT: A Lightweight Encryption Algorithm for Secure Internet of Things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) being a promising technology of the future is\nexpected to connect billions of devices. The increased number of communication\nis expected to generate mountains of data and the security of data can be a\nthreat. The devices in the architecture are essentially smaller in size and low\npowered. Conventional encryption algorithms are generally computationally\nexpensive due to their complexity and requires many rounds to encrypt,\nessentially wasting the constrained energy of the gadgets. Less complex\nalgorithm, however, may compromise the desired integrity. In this paper we\npropose a lightweight encryption algorithm named as Secure IoT (SIT). It is a\n64-bit block cipher and requires 64-bit key to encrypt the data. The\narchitecture of the algorithm is a mixture of feistel and a uniform\nsubstitution-permutation network. Simulations result shows the algorithm\nprovides substantial security in just five encryption rounds. The hardware\nimplementation of the algorithm is done on a low cost 8-bit micro-controller\nand the results of code size, memory utilization and encryption/decryption\nexecution cycles are compared with benchmark encryption algorithms. The MATLAB\ncode for relevant simulations is available online at https://goo.gl/Uw7E0W.\n