Assessment of Radiation-Induced Soft Errors on Lightweight Cryptography Algorithms Running on a Resource-Constrained Device

Abstract

Most safety-critical edge-computing devices rely on lightweight cryptography (LWC) algorithms to provide security at minimum power and performance overhead. LWC algorithms are traditionally embedded as a hardware component, but with the advance of the Internet of Things (IoT), emerging firmware is more likely to support cryptography algorithms to comply with different security levels and industry-standards. This is the first work to present the soft error assessment of five cryptography algorithms executing in a low-power microprocessor running under neutron radiation, considering electronic code book (ECB) and counter (CTR) mode of operation implementations. Results obtained from two neutron radiation tests suggest that: ( i ) the NOEKEON algorithm gives the best relative soft error reliability, performance, power efficiency and memory footprint utilisation trade-offs between the five algorithms considering both ECB and CTR implementations, and ( ii ) cryptography solutions based on the counter mode of operation present better FIT rate for silent data corruption (SDC) and crash w.r.t. ECB implementations.