Toward a Modular Evaluation Framework for Lightweight AEAD Ciphers

Conference papers

Authors

Ikechukwu John Chukka , Vesna Dimitrova and Tugce Balli

Abstract

Lightweight cryptography is essential for securing resource-constrained devices and continues to evolve rapidly. In this work, we propose a modular and extensible evaluation framework that benchmarks lightweight ciphers using three critical software performance metrics: code size, execution time, and RAM consumption. To complement standard benchmarking, we conducted nonce misuse experiments, highlighting an often-overlooked dimension of cryptographic evaluation. Our results show that ASCON achieves the most compact code size, while AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305, despite their ubiquity in real-world protocols, exhibit higher resource demands and weaker robustness under misuse.

Keywords

Lightweight Cryptography, AEAD, Benchmarking Framework, NIST LWC, Nonce Misuse