Secure Lightweight Pairing-Based Key-Agreement Cryptosystems: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

Abstract-Although a large number of pairing-based key-agreement cryptosystems have been proposed, there are still a lot of drawbacks. One of the most important disadvantages of mentioned cryptographic functions is that there is not a comprehensive system to satisfy both security and efficiency requirements. Moreover, there is not an integrated document to categorize and present possible challenges. Therefore, we paid particular attention to this issue, unlike other surveys in the area of key-agreement cryptosystems. In this paper, we presented a new method to address possible challenges. Actually, we claim that unlike existing documents, this paper determines possible challenges and open problems in the area of lightweight pairing-based key-agreement cryptosystems. We expect that our findings make other researchers able to classify all presented cryptosystems in this area and help them to follow the best way to solve possible problems in the future researches.Index Terms-Key-agreement, lightweight, pairing-based.

Security evaluation over lightweight cryptographic protocols

“…Motivated by what pointed above, cryptography research community have concluded that the use of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is the golden key to make public key cryptosystems lightweight in order to make them appropriate for resource constrained platforms [7]. As an example, we can refer to the result of what studied by Tan et al [13] who compared the energy cost of two popular Public-Key cryptosystems, RSA and ECC.…”

“…Mentioned reasons above were sufficient to persuade a large group of developers to find a solution to make public key cryptosystems feasible in resource-constrained platforms [7]. To make the use of public key cryptosystems feasible in such resource constrained environments, it is possible to refer to what Gaubatz et al proposed in [10].…”

“…Accordingly, a large variety of lightweight ECC based cryptosystems have been proposed to fulfill the requirements of a subset of resource constrained environments. The use of bilinear pairings over algebraic elliptic curves is the basis of a large category of mentioned ECC based cryptosystems [7]. Therefore, pairing based cryptography has had a significant role in the most proposed lightweight cryptosystems especially in resource-constrained ones [16].…”

“…As the second dimension, we have tried to introduce the boundary of well-known standard attacks against the main cryptographic primitives, Encryption, Digital Signature and key Agreement. Finally, the last dimension introduces possible challenges for the future researches over cryptosystems especially lightweight and/or provably secure ones by expanding what investigated in [7] to cover more variety of cryptographic protocols.…”

“…As the first dimension, we have tried to trace the way that a subset of researchers made their proposed cryptosystems lightweight. The outline of this part is to clarify what investigated in [7]. As the second dimension, we have tried to introduce the boundary of well-known standard attacks against the main cryptographic primitives, Encryption, Digital Signature and key Agreement.…”