• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.1608-1616
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• 2015

This paper describes an efficient hardware implementation of lightweight encryption algorithm LEA-128/192/256 which supports for three master key lengths of 128/192/256-bit. To achieve area-efficient and low-power implementation of LEA crypto- processor, the key scheduler block is optimized to share hardware resources for encryption/decryption key scheduling of three master key lengths. In addition, a parallel register structure and novel operating scheme for key scheduler is devised to reduce clock cycles required for key scheduling, which results in an increase of encryption/decryption speed by 20~30%. The designed LEA crypto-processor has been verified by FPGA implementation. The estimated performances according to master key lengths of 128/192/256-bit are 181/162/109 Mbps, respectively, at 113 MHz clock frequency.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.777-779
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• 2014

The LEA(Lightweight Encryption Algorithm) is a 128-bit high-speed/lightweight block cipher algorithm developed by National Security Research Institute(NSRI) in 2012. The LEA encrypts plain text of 128-bit using cipher key of 128/192/256-bit, and produces cipher text of 128-bit, and vice versa. To reduce hardware complexity, we propose an efficient architecture which shares hardware resources for encryption and decryption in round transformation block. Hardware sharing technique for key scheduler was also devised to achieve area-efficient and low-power implementation. The designed LEA cryptographic processor was verified by using FPGA implementation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.1276-1284
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• 2017

Lightweight Encryption Algorithm (LEA) that was standardized as a lightweight block cipher was implemented with 8-bit data path, and the vulnerability of LEA encryption processor to correlation power analysis (CPA) attack was analyzed. The CPA used in this paper detects correct round keys by analyzing correlation coefficient between the Hamming distance of the computed data by applying hypothesized keys and the power dissipated in LEA crypto-processor. As a result of CPA attack, correct round keys were detected, which have maximum correlation coefficients of 0.6937, 0.5507, and this experimental result shows that block cipher LEA is vulnerable to power analysis attacks. A masking method based on TRNG was proposed as a countermeasure to CPA attack. By applying masking method that adds random values obtained from TRNG to the intermediate data of encryption, incorrect round keys having maximum correlation coefficients of 0.1293, 0.1190 were analyzed. It means that the proposed masking method is an effective countermeasure to CPA attack.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.401-403
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• 2015

This paper describes an efficient hardware design of 128-bit block cipher algorithm LEA(lightweight encryption algorithm). In order to achieve area-efficient and low-power implementation, round block and key scheduler block are optimized to share hardware resources for encryption and decryption. The key scheduler register is modified to reduce clock cycles required for key scheduling, which results in improved encryption/decryption performance. FPGA synthesis results of the LEA processor show that it has 2,364 slices, and the estimated performance for the master key of 128/192/256-bit at 113 MHz clock frequency is about 181/162/109 Mbps, respectively.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.468-474
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• 2020

This paper describes the hardware implementation of SPECK, a lightweight block cipher algorithm developed for the security of applications with limited resources such as IoT and wireless sensor networks. The block cipher SPECK crypto-core supports 8 block/key sizes, and the internal data-path was designed with 16-bit for small gate counts. The final round key to be used for decryption is pre-generated through the key initialization process and stored with the initial key, enabling the encryption/decryption for consecutive blocks. It was also designed to process round operations and key scheduling independently to increase throughput. The hardware operation of the SPECK crypto-core was validated through FPGA verification, and it was implemented with 1,503 slices on the Virtex-5 FPGA device, and the maximum operating frequency was estimated to be 98 MHz. When it was synthesized with a 180 nm process, the maximum operating frequency was estimated to be 163 MHz, and the estimated throughput was in the range of 154 ~ 238 Mbps depending on the block/key sizes.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.1609-1617
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• 2019

Described in this paper is a design of hardware accelerator for implementing public-key cryptographic protocols (PKCPs) based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and RSA. It supports five elliptic curves (ECs) over GF(p) and three key lengths of RSA that are defined by NIST standard. It was designed to support four point operations over ECs and six modular arithmetic operations, making it suitable for hardware implementation of ECC- and RSA-based PKCPs. In order to achieve small-area implementation, a finite field arithmetic circuit was designed with 32-bit data-path, and it adopted word-based Montgomery multiplication algorithm, the Jacobian coordinate system for EC point operations, and the Fermat's little theorem for modular multiplicative inverse. The hardware operation was verified with FPGA device by implementing EC-DH key exchange protocol and RSA operations. It occupied 20,800 gate equivalents and 28 kbits of RAM at 50 MHz clock frequency with 180-nm CMOS cell library, and 1,503 slices and 2 BRAMs in Virtex-5 FPGA device.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.736-743
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• 2020

Modular multiplication is one of the most important arithmetic operations in public-key cryptography such as elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and RSA, and the performance of modular multiplier is a key factor influencing the performance of public-key cryptographic hardware. An efficient hardware implementation of word-based Montgomery modular multiplication algorithm is described in this paper. Our modular multiplier was designed to support eleven field sizes for prime field GF(p) and binary field GF(2k) as defined by SEC2 standard for ECC, making it suitable for lightweight hardware implementations of ECC processors. The proposed architecture employs pipeline scheme between the partial product generation and addition operation and the modular reduction operation to reduce the clock cycles required to compute modular multiplication by 50%. The hardware operation of our modular multiplier was demonstrated by FPGA verification. When synthesized with a 65-nm CMOS cell library, it was realized with 33,635 gate equivalents, and the maximum operating clock frequency was estimated at 147 MHz.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.1470-1476
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• 2020

This paper describes a design of a lightweight security system-on-chip (SoC) suitable for the implementation of security protocols for IoT and mobile devices. The security SoC using Cortex-M0 as a CPU integrates hardware crypto engines including an elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) core, a SHA3 hash core, an ARIA-AES block cipher core and a true random number generator (TRNG) core. The ECC core was designed to support twenty elliptic curves over both prime field and binary field defined in the SEC2, and was based on a word-based Montgomery multiplier in which the partial product generations/additions and modular reductions are processed in a sub-pipelining manner. The H/W-S/W co-operation for elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (EC-DSA) protocol was demonstrated by implementing the security SoC on a Cyclone-5 FPGA device. The security SoC, synthesized with a 65-nm CMOS cell library, occupies 193,312 gate equivalents (GEs) and 84 kbytes of RAM.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.38-45
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• 2018

An integrated cryptographic processor that efficiently integrates ARIA, AES block ciphers and Whirlpool hash function into a single hardware architecture is described. Based on the algorithm characteristics of ARIA, AES, and Whirlpool, we optimized the design so that the hardware resources of the substitution layer and the diffusion layer were shared. The round block was designed to operate in a time-division manner for the round transformation and the round key expansion of the Whirlpool hash, resulting in a lightweight hardware implementation. The hardware operation of the integrated ARIA-AES-Whirlpool crypto-processor was verified by Virtex5 FPGA implementation, and it occupied 68,531 gate equivalents (GEs) with a 0.18um CMOS cell library. When operating at 80 MHz clock frequency, it was estimated that the throughputs of ARIA, AES block ciphers, and Whirlpool hash were 602~787 Mbps, 682~930 Mbps, and 512 Mbps, respectively.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.1929-1934
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• 2017

Lightweight block cipher (Lightweight Encryption Algorithm, LEA), is the most promising block cipher algorithm due to its efficient implementation feature and high security level. The LEA block cipher is widely used in real-field applications and there are many efforts to enhance the performance of LEA in terms of execution timing to achieve the high availability under any circumstances. In this paper, we enhance the performance of LEA block cipher, particularly on ARMv8 processors. The LEA implementation is optimized by using new SIMD instructions namely NEON engine and 24 LEA encryption operations are simultaneously performed in parallel way. In order to reduce the number of memory access, we utilized the all NEON registers to retain the intermediate results. Finally, we evaluated the performance of the LEA implementation, and the proposed implementations on Apple A7 and Apple A9 achieved the 2.4 cycles/byte and 2.2 cycles/byte, respectively.