FPGA Implementation Of Lightweight Security Mechanisms; Simon And Speck

Abstract

The practice of protecting data’s confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity from unauthorized access is known as cryptography. The significance of cryptography cannot be overstated in the digital age of today when virtually all of our personal and business information is stored and transmitted online. Secure protection for sensitive data like bank account information, personal identification information, and confidential business data is provided by cryptography. It also helps protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, like financial systems and power grids. Online communication and transactions would be highly susceptible to interception and manipulation without cryptography, which would result in data breaches and a loss of trust. As a result, maintaining the privacy and security of our digital world necessitates the widespread use of cryptography. Simon and Speck are two families of lightweight block ciphers that were designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) for use in constrained environments such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, smart cards, and other low-power embedded systems. Simon and Speck have been optimized for performance and efficiency, while still maintaining a high level of security. These ciphers are designed to be compact, with a small memory footprint and low power consumption, making them ideal for use in resource-constrained devices. However, the use of Simon and Speck has been controversial due to concerns about the NSA’s involvement in their design and potential vulnerabilities in the algorithms. Despite this controversy, Simon and Speck are widely used in the industry due to their ability to provide a good balance between security and efficiency for lightweight devices. In our project, we are going to design Simon and Speck algorithms using three different approaches i.e. Software implementation using C++, hardware implementation on FPGA, and ASIC implementation on ASIC (0.18 nm cmos technology). The aim of our project is resource-efficient implementation of Simon and Speck on software, hardware, and ASICs.