The Implementation of a Symmetric Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithm called SECURE-BEE Applicable in Communicating Embedded Systems

Abstract

In our modern society, comfort plays an essential role. To increase the comfort, more automation is required. Most of the Automation Systems consist of multiple Embedded Systems, that communicate with each other, either wired or wireless. To ensure confidentiality, a secure communication is required. Since most of the Embedded Systems use Central Processing Units (CPUs) that are more energy efficient and less powerful than CPUs of Personal Computers (PCs), it is important to use Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithms (LCAs). This paper describes a new implemented LCA, that uses Symmetric Key Cryptography, needs less computation power, and the risk that it can be cracked by a Brute-Force Attack is vanishingly small. The results show the benefits and drawbacks of the developed LCA called SECURE-BEE, in comparison to two other LCAs. It is to mention, that this paper focuses on the implementation of a new LCA. A comparison of the memory usage and the average time for the encryption and decryption has been made only to show, that SECURE-BEE fulfills the encryption and decryption time of LCAs.