Software randomness analysis and evaluation of lightweight ciphers: the prospective for IoT security

In the past few years, various lightweight cryptographic algorithms have been proposed to balance the trade-offs between the requirements of resource constrained IoT devices and the need to securely transmit and protect data. However, it is critical to analyze and evaluate these algorithms to examine their capabilities. This paper provides a thorough investigation of the randomness of ciphertext obtained from Simeck, Kasumi, DES and AES. The design of our randomness analysis is based on five metrics implemented following the guidance of the NIST statistical test suite for cryptographic applications. This analysis also provides performance and power consumption evaluations for the selected cryptographic algorithms using different platforms and measures. Results from the evaluation reveal that lightweight algorithms have competitive randomness levels, lower processing time and lower power consumption when compared to conventional algorithms.