Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2021/058

A Performance Study of Crypto-Hardware in the Low-end IoT

Peter Kietzmann and Lena Boeckmann and Leandro Lanzieri and Thomas C. Schmidt and Matthias Wählisch

Abstract: In this paper, we contribute a comprehensive resource analysis for widely used cryptographic primitives across different off-the-shelf IoT platforms, and quantify the performance impact of crypto-hardware. This work builds on the newly designed crypto-subsystem of the IoT operating system RIOT, which provides seamless crypto support across software and hardware components. Our evaluations show that (i) hardware-based crypto outperforms software by considerably over 100 %, which is crucial for nodal lifetime. Despite, the memory consumption typically increases moderately. (ii) Hardware diversity, driver design, and software implementations heavily impact resource efficiency. (iii) External crypto-chips operate slowly on symmetric crypto-operations, but provide secure write-only memory for private credentials, which is unavailable on many platforms.

Category / Keywords: implementation / Internet of Things, Embedded Security

Original Publication (in the same form): EWSN'21: Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks

Date: received 15 Jan 2021, last revised 13 Feb 2021

Contact author: peter kietzmann at haw-hamburg de

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20210213:093210 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2021/058