Detailed Assessment of Hardware Implementations, Attacks and Countermeasures for the Ascon Authenticated Cipher

ABSTRACT The design and implementation of lightweight‐oriented ciphers on hardware has turned into an urgent matter with the expansive field of Internet of Things (IoT) and the ever increasing presence of small electronic devices that require fast and secure communication in our modern world. In 2023, the Ascon cipher was selected as the new standard authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) algorithm for lightweight environments by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This paper provides a full comparison and joint evaluation of the hardware implementations, attacks and countermeasures that have been proposed for Ascon since it was published, aiming to shed light on some open development paths in addition to enable the hardware designer to make better informed decisions. All in all, Ascon implementations tend to achieve great performance while staying lightweight, but unprotected implementations are vulnerable to hardware attacks, and some attacks can even dodge counter measures. The very promising Ascon cipher will surely thrive in the field of lightweight cryptography, but further work into the design of secure implementations is still needed, being this paper a great starting point for researchers and designers alike.