A secure lightweight algorithm for Internet of Things: Analytical study

Recently, a massive amount of critical data and immense sensitivity stemming from the interconnectivity of billions of devices (such as wireless sensing, embedded technologies, and radio frequency identification) have leveraged the diverse capabilities of modern technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT). Owing to their limited capabilities, it is crucial to prioritize protecting the sensitive data generated by these devices. Traditional encryption methods, such as AES and RSA, often take too long to run and require excessive memory for devices with limited resources to handle well. In addition, designing a simple encryption algorithm should not affect the integrity and security of the data. To this end, the proposed algorithm uses an 80-bit cipher key to encrypt a 64-bit data block. In addition, it improves the complexity of security by using Feistel and Substitution-Permutation (SP) architectures to achieve complex encryption in only six rounds. The proposed algorithm was simulated using MATLAB and FELICS tools. The algorithm was implemented on both image and text data. Simulations demonstrated that the proposed algorithm achieves superior complexity, security, and robustness against various attack types, making it highly suitable for IoT environments.