Security of Low Computing Power Devices: A Survey of Requirements, Challenges & Possible Solutions

Abstract

Security has been a primary concern in almost all areas of computing and for the devices that are low on computing power it becomes more important. In this paper, a new class of computing device termed as Low Computing Power Device (LCPD) has been defined conceptually. The paper brings out common attributes, security requirements and security challenges of all kinds of low computing power devices in one place so that common security solutions for these can be designed and implemented rather than doing this for each individual device type. A survey of existing recent security solutions for different LCPDs hasve been presented here. This paper has also provided possible security solutions for LCPDs which include identification of countermeasures against different threats and attacks on these devices, and choosing appropriate cryptographic mechanism for implementing the countermeasures efficiently.

Elliptic Curve Signcryption-Based Mutual Authentication Protocol for Smart Cards

“…• Low Computational Capability-The smart cards have a low computational capacity of 1-5 MHz clock rate, less than 1 MB flash memory, and a few hundreds of KB RAM [5]. Owing to these restricted computational resources, it is challenging to develop computationally efficient security solutions that satisfy the required security attributes as well as security functions.…”

A Novel Security Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Elliptic Curve Signcryption

“…Various security protocols for WSNs based on different cryptographic systems with different level of security have been proposed by different authors. But the recent focus of the researchers has been on designing Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) based security mechanisms for WSNs, since ECC based solutions are suitable for applications involving low computing power devices like wireless sensors [4]. Therefore in this section, the security protocols for WSNs based on elliptic curves proposed by different authors have been highlighted.…”

“…They proved that elliptic curve signcryption consumes 58% less time and 40% less communication bandwidth than the signature-then-encryption mechanism based on the elliptic curve. For low computing power devices (LCPDs) it is wise to use elliptic curve signcryption schemes, since it saves a huge amount of computational time and communication bandwidth, while also providing many security attributes including authentication, secure key establishment, confidentiality, nonrepudiation, integrity, unforgeability, and forward security [4]. The elliptic curve signcryption scheme proposed by Y. Zheng and H. Imai [21] has been publicized in Figure 3 to provide a glimpse that how elliptic curves can be used in designing signcryption schemes.…”

“…In addition to this, it is presumed that the proposed protocol uses AES-128 algorithm for encryption/decryption and SHA-1 algorithm for producing the hash code of the input. The two main reasons for choosing AES-128 algorithm for encryption/decryption arefirst 128-bit key will not put more computational load on the wireless sensors which is a low computing power device and second, the cryptographic support for implementing AES-128 is available in wireless sensors [4].…”