Efficient and reliable computations for lightweight and/or high-performance cryptosystems: algorithms, architectures, designs and implementations

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With rapid advances in information, computer and communication technologies and systems, huge amount of data has to be processed, stored and exchanged among users, which makes data integrity and information security very important issues. To protect the data and make it secure, various cryptographic primitives are being incorporated in many standards and protocols and implemented in a wide range of platforms; from powerful computers used in servers and base stations to lightweight cryptosystems used in wireless devices. The performance of cryptosystems rely heavily on efficient cryptographic computations, specially in resource constrained embedded systems, such as smart cards, RFID tags, Internet of Things, and nodes in wireless sensor networks, where the power consumption, memory, and bandwidth are very limited. Reliable and efficient design and implementation of cryptographic computations are challenging due to their complex nature. The main objectives of the research are summarized as follows:***(i) We will investigate the development of new efficient algorithms and architectures for finite field arithmetic operations, such as multiplication, squaring, inversion, and exponentiation in binary extension fields using polynomial, shifted polynomial and Gaussian normal basis representations. We will consider their designs and implementations in ASICs and FPGAs. For each and every working platform, we plan to further optimize these operations for both lightweight and high-performance applications to have low-resource and/or high-speed computations.***(ii) We will study the designs and implementations of a number of public and private key cryptosystems based on our newly proposed multipliers. Finite field multiplication is the main arithmetic operation used in elliptic curve and exponentiation-based cryptosystems, the AES-GCM authenticated encryption and the WG stream cipher. The effects of using different digit-level multipliers will be investigated to further optimize these cryptosystems for two-end applications namely, lightweight and high-performance cryptosystems. ***(iii) We will explore new reliable and robust schemes for private and public key cryptosystems to counteract natural faults and fault attacks. This research is very important due to the fact that fault attacks have become a serious concern in cryptographic applications. The research will be based on adopting efficient concurrent error control coding approaches with low overhead and acceptable error detection capability. ****This research will lead to more secure and reliable cryptosystems with lower cost and higher performance. It will also significantly contribute to training highly qualified personnel for academia and a large number of companies in the Canadian Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) sector.**