A Performance Comparison of the PRESENT Lightweight Cryptography Algorithm on Different Hardware Platforms

Cryptography has long been used to send messages from point A to point B without anyone else being able to read it during the transfer processes. Historical examples of cryptography can be seen in use during war times to... [ view full abstract ]

Cryptography has long been used to send messages from point A to point B without anyone else being able to read it during the transfer processes. Historical examples of cryptography can be seen in use during war times to transfer secret messages.

As technology moves forward and semiconductor devices become faster, smaller, cheaper and increase almost exponentially in capability, these devices are being used to handle and transfer private user data over large scale networks. This data can range anywhere from a persons bank details to a smart card or even extremely sensitive biometric data gathered from a medical device being used by the user, with the sensitive information being sent over the internet to a doctor's office to be analysed. This era of small consumer devices which can read and transmit data over a large network is referred to as the era of the "Internet of things".

The era of the internet of things raises new security concern of how can this user data be kept secure? The answer lies within the field of lightweight cryptography. Lightweight cryptography is a category of cryptographic algorithms which are designed with the idea of implementing the algorithm in hardware and software. These algorithms have to be highly secure, have high throughput and can be easily implemented in hardware and take up the smallest area possible. One such lightweight cryptography algorithm is the PRESENT cipher. The PRESENT cipher is a block cipher which has been designed to the fast, secure and be easily implemented in hardware.

This paper focuses on the implementation of a cryptography algorithm known as PRESENT. The aim of the project is to apply the PRESENT algorithm to the hardware of the Xilinx Zynq chip, and pass information through the algorithm to encrypt and decrypt the information. This paper will also compare the speed of the algorithm in software to the speed of the algorithm in hardware.