NIST Standardizes Ascon Cryptographic Algorithm for IoT and Other Lightweight Devices

The
U.S.
National
Institute
of
Standards
and
Technology
(NIST)
has
announced
that
a
family
of
authenticated
encryption
and
hashing
algorithms
known
as
Ascon
will
be
standardized
for

lightweight
cryptography
applications.

“The
chosen
algorithms
are
designed
to
protect
information
created
and
transmitted
by
the
Internet
of
Things
(IoT),
including
its
myriad
tiny
sensors
and
actuators,”
NIST

said.
“They
are
also
designed
for
other
miniature
technologies
such
as
implanted
medical
devices,
stress
detectors
inside
roads
and
bridges,
and
keyless
entry
fobs
for
vehicles.”

Put
differently,
the
idea
is
to
adopt
security
protections
via
lightweight
cryptography
in
devices
that
have
a
“limited
amount
of
electronic
resources.”

Ascon
is

credited
to
a
team
of
cryptographers
from
the
Graz
University
of
Technology,
Infineon
Technologies,
Lamarr
Security
Research,
and
Radboud
University.

The
suite
comprises
authenticated
ciphers
ASCON-128,
ASCON-128a,
and
a
variant
called
ASCON-80pq
that
comes
with
resistance
against

quantum
key-search.
It
also
offers
a
set
of
hash
functions
ASCON-HASH,
ASCON-HASHA,
ASCON-XOF,
and
ASCON-XOFA.

It’s
primarily
aimed
at
constrained
devices,
and
is
said
to
be
“easy
to
implement,
even
with
added
countermeasures
against

side-channel
attacks,”
according
to
its
developers.
This
means
that
even
if
an
adversary
manages
to
glean
sensitive
information
about
the
internal
state
during
data
processing,
it
cannot
be
leveraged
to
recover
the
secret
key.

Ascon
is
also
engineered
to
provide
authenticated
encryption
with
associated
data
(AEAD),
which
makes
it
possible
to
bind
ciphertext
to
additional
information,
such
as
a
device’s
IP
address,
to
authenticate
the
ciphertext
and
prove
its
integrity.

“The
algorithm
ensures
that
all
of
the
protected
data
is
authentic
and
has
not
changed
in
transit,”
NIST
said.
“AEAD
can
be
used
in
vehicle-to-vehicle
communications,
and
it
also
can
help
prevent
counterfeiting
of
messages
exchanged
with
the
radio
frequency
identification
(RFID)
tags
that
often
help
track
packages
in
warehouses.”

Implementations
of
the

algorithm
are

available
in
different
programming
languages,
such
as
C,
Java,
Python,
and
Rust,
in
addition
to
hardware
implementations
that
offer
side-channel
protections
and
energy
efficiency.

About Author

AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

See author's posts