CAREER: Utilizing Principles of Energy Recovery Computing for Low-Energy and DPA-Resistant IoT Devices

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have application in smart home, medical devices, vehicles, and various cyber-physical systems. IoT devices have an extremely limited energy and power budget. Lightweight cryptography (LWC) provides cryptographic solutions for resource-constrained IoT devices. However, the secret information stored in LWC based IoT devices is vulnerable and can be revealed by side-channel attacks such as Differential Power Analysis (DPA). DPA is used to reveal the keys from cryptosystems by statistically analyzing the power consumption. The challenge in IoT devices is to provide low-energy lightweight cryptographic operation that are also resistant against differential power analysis attacks. Therefore, the research goal of this NSF CAREER proposal is to explore the principles of energy recovery computing to lower the energy consumption of the lightweight cryptographic circuits in IoT devices while at the same time increasing their DPA-resistance. The success of this proposal would make a strong case for industry adoption of energy recovery computing as a main stream technology to design low-energy DPA resistant IoT devices. The education goal of this NSF CAREER proposal is to advance the cybersecurity education from high school to graduate-level at the University of Kentucky and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The PI plans to achieve this goal through: (i) curriculum development for undergraduate and graduate students to build University of Kentucky’s cybersecurity certificate programs, (ii) involving undergraduate students in hardware security and cybersecurity research, (iii) broadening participation of minority and underrepresented Appalachian high-school students in engineering and cybersecurity programs.