Cryptography for embedded systems - Part 1: Security level categories & hashing

First of all, we will look at whether cryptography is even necessary. Some applications can actually get away without using traditional cryptography. These applications utilize other mechanisms, such as hashing algorithms, in order to provide some assurance about data. The big advantage here is that hashing algorithms are typically many orders of magnitude faster than symmetric or public-key cryptography.

One classification that will help us make the decision is whether or not we care about eavesdropping. If we only care that the data is reliable, and do not care who gets it, we can definitely avoid cryptography. We will look at these types of applications and come up with some other general rules for determining if an application requires the more expensive operations, or can get away with less.

We will look at cryptographic hashing, and discuss some optimizations and other tricks that can be used to speed up commonly used algorithms. Due to recent discoveries of weaknesses in the commonly used algorithms MD5 and SHA-1, we will also look at the future of hashing, and see if there is an alternative method, or new algorithms we can choose.

For those applications that require absolute secrecy, there are many options that will help the embedded developer meet the goals of performance, cost, and security. We will look at some specific algorithms, such as DES/3DES, which is slow and obsolete but still necessary for some applications. AES, the replacement for DES, will also be covered, and specifically, some of the hardware options available. Additionally, we will look at RC4 and other ciphers that provide a marked performance advantage over the bulkier DES and AES, but are not as provably secure.

Finally, we will cover public-key algorithms, and specifically, RSA, by far the most commonly used public-key cipher. Unfortunately, RSA and other public-key algorithms are extremely slow, requiring hardware assistance on many platforms—not just small embedded systems. However, these algorithms are essential to certain protocols (primarily SSL and SSH), so we will look at ways of handling the computationally intense public-key operations, including software tricks and hardware assistance.