Study About the Performance of Ascon in Arduino Devices

In 2023, the Ascon cipher suite was selected as the winner of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standardization process for lightweight cryptography, and has emerged as the leading candidate for cryptographic algorithms in resource-constrained environments. This cipher suite provides authenticated encryption with associated data and hash functionality. NIST’s Ascon proposal consists of two symmetric ciphers, Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a, a hash function, Ascon-HASH, an extendible output function, Ascon-XOF, and a new cipher variant, Ascon-80pq, with increased resistance to quantum attacks. This study presents an overview of the mathematical background, security principles and key properties of the Ascon cipher suite. In addition, a comprehensive performance evaluation of Ascon on various Arduino platforms, such as Arduino DUE, Arduino Mega2560, Arduino Nano Every and Arduino Nano ESP32, is performed. A detailed comparative analysis of these implementations is also provided.