NIST selects Ascon for lightweight cryptography

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has moved to standardize the Ascon suite of authenticated encryption and hashing algorithms for lightweight cryptography applications, including Internet of Things systems, implanted medical devices, road stress indicators, and vehicle keyless entry fobs, according to The Hacker News.

Developed by cryptographers from Infineon Technologies, Lamarr Security Research, Radbound University, and Graz University of Technology, Ascon features authenticated cyphers, one of which has quantum key-search protections, and several hash functions that could be easily implemented while providing defenses against side-channel attacks.

Authenticated encryption with associated data is also being employed by Ascon to facilitate ciphertext authentication and integrity verification.

"The algorithm ensures that all of the protected data is authentic and has not changed in transit. AEAD can be used in vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and it also can help prevent counterfeiting of messages exchanged with the radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that often help track packages in warehouses," said NIST.