There are several emerging areas (e.g. sensor networks, healthcare, distributed control systems, the Internet of Things, cyber physical systems) in which highly-constrained devices are interconnected, typically communicating wirelessly with one another, and working in concert to accomplish some task. Because the majority of current cryptographic algorithms were designed for desktop/server environments, many of these algorithms do not fit into constrained devices.  

NIST has initiated a process to solicit, evaluate, and standardize lightweight cryptographic algorithms that are suitable for use in constrained environments where the performance of current NIST cryptographic standards is not acceptable. NIST has published a call for algorithms (test vector generation code) to be considered for lightweight cryptographic standards. The deadline for submitting algorithms has passed.

Round 1 Candidates

NIST received 57 submissions to be considered for standardization. After the initial review of the submissions, 56 were selected as Round 1 Candidates.   

Round 2 Candidates

Due to the large number of submissions and the short timeline of the NIST lightweight cryptography standardization process, some of the candidates were eliminated from consideration early in the first evaluation phase in order to focus analysis on the more promising candidates. Of the 56 Round 1 candidates, 32 were selected to continue to Round 2.

Finalists

On March 29, 2021, NIST announced ten finalists as ASCON, Elephant, GIFT-COFB, Grain128-AEAD, ISAP, Photon-Beetle, Romulus, Sparkle, TinyJambu, and Xoodyak

Software Benchmarking

• Microcontroller Benchmarking by NIST LWC team
• AVR/ARM Microcontroller Benchmarking by Rhys Weatherley
• AVR/ARM/RISC-V Microcontroller Benchmarking by Sebastian Renner, Enrico Pozzobon, and Jürgen Mottok
• RISC-V Benchmarking by Fabio Campos, Lars Jellema, Mauk Lemmen, Lars Müller, Daan Sprenkels, and Benoit Viguier
• eBACS (ECRYPT Benchmarking of Cryptographic Systems): General-purpose Processor (Intel, AMD, ARM Cortex-A, Qualcomm) Benchmarking

Hardware Benchmarking

• FPGA Benchmarking by Kamyar Mohajerani, Richard Haeussler, Rishub Nagpal, Farnoud Farahmand, Abubakr Abdulgadir, Jens-Peter Kaps, and Kris Gaj
• ASIC Benchmarking by Mustafa Khairallah, Thomas Peyrin, and Anupam Chattopadhyay
• ASIC Benchmarking by M. D. Aagaard and N. Zidarič

Next Steps

• The final round of the standardization process is expected to last approximately 12 months. NIST will host a workshop near the end of the evaluation period.

Timeline