Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: CRYSTALS-Kyber, officially standardized by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in August 2024 as ML-KEM FIPS, is the only post quantum secure key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) standard. Due to its inherent computationally intensive nature, mapping it on lightweight IoT devices is often a struggle. This study examines the replacement of the Keccak hashing function in Kyber-KEM with the NIST LWC competition winner called Ascon hash function. We compare speed/ memory improvement by executing Kyber-KEM-Ascon on an ARM Cortex M4 device and present novel benchmarking results; Kyber-KEM-Ascon shows about 25% reduction in clock cycles, along with lower memory usage requirements (about 8%). These results suggest that Kyber-KEM-Ascon is more suited for lightweight platforms, offering benefits for IoT security applications.
Authors: Sahar Shehzadi, Nathan Whaley, Ayesha Khalid, Abdul Ghafoor, Sadiqa Arshad, Faiz Ul Islam, Máire O’Neill
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4411725608